Mark Gatiss, who co-created dark comedy series The League of Gentlemen and Sherlock, and starred in queer favourite Nighty Night, has called for better representation for gay characters ion TV, adding that “gay people should be allowed to be boring on screen”.
The 58-year-old screenwriter – who is in a civil partnership with actor-and-writer Ian Hallard – accepts that much progress has been made in the past 30 years when it comes to diversity and representation on screen.
However, Gatiss says there’s still a “terrible burden on any minority character to be everything at once” rather than allowing them to just be regular characters.
Speaking on the Masterpiece Studio podcast, Mark said: “I always used to say, true progress is when being gay is the most incidental part of the character.
“And there’s still to this day a terrible burden on any minority character to be everything at once. It’s terribly difficult because people want to read so much into it.
“But then if you have a great panoply of incidentally gay characters, they can be good, bad, indifferent.
“Gay people should be allowed to be boring on screen, or vicious, or self-loathing, or very funny, or not funny at all, or everything that everyone else is allowed to be.
“So, yes, I think there’s great progress in that.”
