Mark Gatiss: UK industry has been ‘shaken to its core’

UK-based writer and actor Mark Gatiss has thrown his name behind proposals to tax international streamers and preserve British TV production, adding that the country’s industry has been “shaken to its core” over recent years.

MPs called for “urgent action” to support the UK industry earlier this year, with the UK’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s (CMSC) British Film and HETV report supporting enhanced tax incentives for domestic high-end TV (HETV) and a 5% streamer levy.

Gatiss told Broadcast International he agreed with the proposals, adding that “the persistent problem with Britain is that we simply don’t value the creative industries.”

He continued: “It makes sense to try and protect content because it is increasingly difficult to create high-end drama in the face of behemoths with eyewatering budgets. At the same time, anything protectionist always scares me. It’s a complex issue and I’m not sure these [attempts] ever make any difference.”

Gatiss was speaking at the Italian Global Series Festival (IGSF) in Riccione and Rimini for the premiere of his new show Bookish, a period detective drama he created and stars in for UKTV’s crime channel U&Alibi.

“You come to other countries like Italy or France and the TV and film industry plays a huge part in not only the culture [of the country], but of its economy.

“People just accept that, but in the UK we’ve got a major problem, despite the fact that we all consume so much content every day. Unfortunately, it’s an ideological thing which baffles me constantly.”

He also said numerous friends in the industry have left as the sector has been squeezed by reduced budgets and demand, describing the surge of commissioning following the pandemic as a “massive bubble” that was “totally unsustainable” and like the “wild west”.

“Disney bought everything with four walls,” he said. “That bubble was bound to pop. Everything collapsed. Covid and the actor’s strike seem to have shaken the industry to its core. It’s a bit dizzying. I’ve got so many friends who are leaving the industry and anecdotally you hear many more extraordinary stories. It’s just kind of gone.”

Gatiss also confirmed that a second season of Bookish is set to start filming in August.

Set in London in 1946, the show centres on Gabriel Book (Gatiss) as an antiquarian book dealer and amateur sleuth.

The 6 x 70-minute series was commissioned by head of drama Helen Perry, produced by ITV Studios-owned Eagle Eye Drama and directed by Carolina Giammetta, with Polly Walker, Daniel Mays, Joely Richardson and Connor Finch among cast. PBS Distribution holds the North American rights and Beta Film handles international sales.

“I’m very interested in the whole post-War period which informed Bookish,” he explained in a presentation about the show at the festival. “We have two things left in Britain. One is the Second World War and one is the 1966 World Cup, and we cling to them like a life raft. We increasingly aggrandise and mythologise them out of any perspective.”

However, Gatiss believes there is audience appetite for new detective dramas, adding that “we’re in a new golden age of murder mystery.”

He continued: “It’s murder as parlour game. It’s a great escape for people from the scariness of the real world just as it was in the golden age of murder mystery fiction in the 1930’s and 1940’s. It’s the puzzle that people like, not necessarily having something drenched in blood.”

Bookish has been labelled as ‘cozy crime’, but Gatiss said he finds the term pejorative. “I don’t like the term ‘cozy crime’ because it suggests there’s no teeth to it and there’s definitely teeth to Bookish,” he said.

“In this strange, post-war period the world has been shaken up. It’s in ruins but it’s also a time of extraordinary optimism and a sort of madness. There were lots of liars. People would come back from the War and reinvent themselves as retired Majors who’d had a ‘good war’ but they turned out to be embezzlers and stranglers.”

He added: “I’ve always wanted to play a detective. I’ve had this idea for a long time. It’s also informed by my love of the films of Powell and Pressburger.”

Gatiss, who created BBC hit Sherlock, also touched on why the drama had not returned for a fifth season, explaining that stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman “didn’t want to do it anymore.”

He added: “We pitched a feature film during lockdown which they both liked the idea of but it’s not happened. You have to acknowledge that there is a moment in time in which lightning strikes and then it stops. Never say never, but going back is often very difficult. I don’t want to live in the past.”

Gatiss also said he doubted he would return to Doctor Who, which he last wrote on in 2017.

“I’ve not been asked. I don’t know what’s going on with Doctor Who at the moment. I know it’s all about the Disney deal. I’m two Doctors down and I think once you once or two Doctors down, you can’t come back.”

The IGSF, running 21-28 June, is billed as a new incarnation of the Roma Fiction Festival, which ran for 10 years until 2016. It is organised by Italy’s producers’ association APA, in partnership with the Italian Ministry of Culture and SIAE (Italian Society of Authors and Publishers).