Mark Gatiss says "gay people should be allowed to be boring on screen" and has called for better representation for homosexual characters in television shows.
Mark Gatiss has revealed the progress he wants on TV when it comes to the representation of gay characters
The 58-year-old screenwriter - who is in a long-term relationship with his civil partner, 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 - who co-created dark comedy series 'The League of Gentlemen' and 'Sherlock' among several other shows - 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 - whose latest acting role is in BBC series 'Moonflower Murders' - 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."
Earlier this year, Gatiss revealed he still wants to make a 'Sherlock' movie.
Mark created the modern re-imagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character with former 'Doctor Who' showrunner Steven Mofatt, and after four, three-part series and a special it ended in 2017.
But he is keen to reunite Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock and Martin Freeman's Doctor John Watson on the big screen.
Gatiss previously told Deadline: "We'd like to make a film, but trying to get everyone together is very difficult... You'll have to ask Benedict and Martin.
Gatiss thinks the idea of turning the BBC TV show into a film was "the natural thing to do".
Last year, he told The Guardian newspaper: "People think you can just wave a wand. It's incredibly difficult to get people interested and get films made."
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