Latest / Half the Picture / Mark Gatiss talks Doctor Who's future, Bookish S2 & what he'd do next with Sherlock (4K)

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Mark Gatiss talks Doctor Who's future, Bookish S2 & what he'd do next with Sherlock (4K) · Half the Picture

• 0:00
  Personally, I think it should stop.
• 0:02
  Really?
• 0:03
  I think it should rest for a good while.
• 0:06
  And having come back once, I think it will come back.
• 0:08
  Why wouldn't it?
• 0:09
  The first thing I would have seen of yours when I was a kid would have been Doctor Who.
• 0:13
  One of my personal favourite episodes that you wrote is Victory of the Daleks.
• 0:16
  To me, it's like a bank holiday, Doctor Who.
• 0:18
  It's Spitfires in space.
• 0:20
  And I remember the read-through.
• 0:22
  This is television.
• 0:24
  Ha ha!
• 0:25
  Another great project of yours is, of course, Sherlock.
• 0:28
  You have such a role in the development, the creation and the writing, but also, of course, you know, the presentation.
• 0:34
  You are Mycroft.
• 0:35
  A nice head requires brain power, Sherlock.
• 0:38
  They got 10 million viewers and everything changed.
• 0:42
  And suddenly they were desperate for more and it was giddy.
• 0:46
  And would you say you're an actor who writes or a writer who acts?
• 0:49
  I'd say I'm an actor who writes.
• 0:51
  We are not gamblers here at the Iron Bank or Tyrell.
• 0:55
  I have never seen Game of Thrones.
• 0:57
  And on the red carpet, they kept saying, who should be on the Iron Throne?
• 1:01
  Then I went, me.
• 1:04
  My favourite of the League of Gentlemen characters you play is Les Creme Brulee.
• 1:08
  It's a shit business.
• 1:10
  You'll find out.
• 1:12
  For the world's f***ing we all need a bit of a laugh.
• 1:15
  You can just have a bit more fun.
• 1:16
  At least I want the mums!
• 1:20
  I'm afraid that's all we've got time for.
• 1:24
  we have a small favour to ask all of you.
• 1:26
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• 1:29
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• 1:36
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• 1:39
  Thank you so much.
• 1:41
  In lockdown, me and a friend of mine did what we called the Bond-a-thon.
• 1:46
  Before No Time to Die came out, we watched all... We weren't actually going to watch them all, but we ended up watching all of the Bond films over a year.
• 1:52
  And we did even the non-Eon ones.
• 1:54
  We did Casino Royale.
• 1:55
  And it was one of those things where you watch it, and the 60s is such... You know, everyone loves the 60s, but, like, in a pop culture sense.
• 2:03
  But then you watch Casino Royale and you're like, do I hate the 60s now?
• 2:05
  It's like...
• 2:06
  I think Casino Royale led directly to Charles Manson.
• 2:10
  LAUGHTER
• 2:10
  There was so much rage.
• 2:14
  What was your... Did you have an unexpected surprise from your Wondathon?
• 2:21
  Good question.
• 2:21
  I think... Well, I was never a huge Roger Moore fan because I grew up...
• 2:27
  controversial i grew up so my bond was pierce brossey and dan craig but uh i was surprised at how good spy i love me still is masterpiece yeah it's so much fun it's where everything just comes together totally and it's and for what it is it's perfect it's the next stage it's where they get that that version right never again but that's the one really
• 2:47
  I think for that.
• 2:49
  It's like in the ones after it kind of slid too far one end of the spectrum.
• 2:52
  Before that, it was still trying to, they were kind of riffing on Blacksports.
• 2:54
  It was trying to figure out what it was.
• 2:56
  I love Nim Lai Dai.
• 2:58
  Love it.
• 2:59
  And I'm very fond of Mam the Go and Go because it's minor.
• 3:05
  It wasn't a big success.
• 3:06
  They were flailing a bit, but Christopher Lee is wonderful.
• 3:09
  And it's a curiously small film, but I quite like that about it.
• 3:13
  It's not so kind of grandiose.
• 3:16
  But Spy I Love Me is when it kind of all comes together.
• 3:19
  But that's because it's a remake of You Only Live Twice.
• 3:21
  Yeah, of course.
• 3:22
  As we know.
• 3:23
  My big surprise when I last watched them
• 3:26
  was that Tomorrow Never Dies is unquestionably the best of the Pierce Brosners.
• 3:30
  That's what I was going to say was my ever surprise.
• 3:32
  That, I think, is maybe, I think, the most underrated Bond film.
• 3:35
  It's much better than GoldenEye.
• 3:36
  I think it is, it is.
• 3:38
  It's really good.
• 3:40
  It's really good.
• 3:41
  It's really good.
• 3:42
  We talk about it a lot.
• 3:44
  It's much more coherent than I remember.
• 3:46
  And things like Dr. Kaufman, brilliant.
• 3:48
  Little funny cameos.
• 3:50
  And I think it's really good.
• 3:52
  Don't let me forget it, because I will.
• 3:56
  What is that?
• 3:57
  It's really good.
• 3:57
  Yeah, Ricky Jay and Mr Stamper.
• 4:00
  We quote Elliot Carver, job for Price Performance in the office, all the time.
• 4:03
  When you've removed Mr Bond's heart, there may just be time for him to watch it stop beating.
• 4:11
  It was going to be Hopkins, incredibly.
• 4:14
  Are you serious?
• 4:15
  Was it actually going to be on?
• 4:16
  Because I didn't know that.
• 4:17
  I tend.
• 4:17
  No.
• 4:19
  I think he said yes.
• 4:21
  And then by the time he got the script, it was all pink pages.
• 4:25
  And he said, this isn't the film I agreed to do.
• 4:27
  And he said, no, sadly.
• 4:29
  Wow.
• 4:29
  That'd be different, wouldn't it?
• 4:31
  I think it's really good.
• 4:32
  I think the, the, oh, wait, what was, there was, there's just a kind of humor in that film, and a playfulness, like there's a, there's a scene I remember, always remember where, M is giving Bond his briefing in the back of a, a, a, a MI6 car, and she's got like a, a brandy, and it's like 11 in the morning, and Judi Dench is just supping back on this brandy, and absolutely exuding, thanks so much,
• 4:54
  I mean, they would call it BDE, Big Dick Energy.
• 4:56
  You know, they're just exuding this.
• 4:58
  And for me, the movie just has so much playfulness to it.
• 5:01
  But also, it's got this incredible cast, incredible action.
• 5:04
  That was the surprise to me as well.
• 5:06
  It is, isn't it?
• 5:09
  And I think the self-driving car is superb, that sequence.
• 5:16
  Brilliant.
• 5:16
  It's propeller heads, isn't it?
• 5:17
  Brilliant sequence music.
• 5:19
  But actually, even though we have self-driving cars, it hasn't dated because it's all about his joy.
• 5:25
  And when he lets it fly over, possibly killing at least 10 pedestrians.
• 5:30
  I just love that he goes,
• 5:33
  He's great.
• 5:34
  Very good.
• 5:35
  What's your personal favourite Bond film, would you say?
• 5:39
  My favourite...
• 5:41
  Okay.
• 5:41
  The best is From Russia With Love.
• 5:44
  And my favourite is On The Majesty's Secret Service for different reasons.
• 5:47
  Okay, okay.
• 5:48
  I'm curious.
• 5:48
  It's my favourite for all its imperfections and its strangeness.
• 5:53
  But From Russia With Love is definitely the best one.
• 5:54
  It's brilliant.
• 5:56
  Utterly brilliant, I think.
• 5:58
  Okay.
• 5:58
  Yeah, that's my favourite.
• 6:00
  That's why I went like, because For Usher of Love, I always, I mean, we always have arguments in the office about what's the best one.
• 6:05
  But For Usher of Love, it's like you've got Goldfinger, which is like sets that standard of like action romp for like years.
• 6:11
  And then you've got For Usher of Love coming up just before setting the sort of spy espionage thriller template of the series for like years.
• 6:18
  Those two pillars are.
• 6:20
  It's a bit like Citizen Kane.
• 6:21
  You have to avoid perversely choosing the other.
• 6:25
  You know, Goldfinger is fucking brilliant.
• 6:28
  But I just prefer commercial love because it's smaller, tighter and more spy-y.
• 6:35
  I love the spy-ness of it, you know.
• 6:37
  And Robert Shaw.
• 6:39
  He has, it wasn't until I watched it again.
• 6:42
  Very fit Nash.
• 6:44
  He doesn't have any dialogue until like two thirds from the film.
• 6:46
  I didn't realise that because at the Prince Charles cinema, they showed all of them on 4K so I got to see it on a big screen.
• 6:51
  And that opening title sequence for A Future of Love,
• 6:54
  All analog with the belly dance.
• 6:55
  It still looks amazing.
• 6:56
  There's so much to learn.
• 6:58
  And it's not learned.
• 7:00
  You know, Dr. No doesn't appear until three quarters of the way of the film.
• 7:05
  But like the Iceman, he's talked about constantly.
• 7:08
  And then when he appears, sit down.
• 7:12
  It's magic.
• 7:13
  And then Joseph Wiseman comes on and shows everyone how to do it for 50 years.
• 7:18
  And it doesn't matter how much screen time he's got.
• 7:20
  He's brilliant.
• 7:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 7:22
  And why is Honor of the Secret Service your personal favourite?
• 7:28
  I think because...
• 7:31
  I think it's the best directed score.
• 7:34
  It's the best score.
• 7:35
  I love all the snow stuff.
• 7:37
  I love it because Lazenby is so uncertain.
• 7:41
  And if Connery had done it, when he is visibly bored in You Only Live Twice, it wouldn't be the same film.
• 7:48
  And obviously he's not really an actor, but there are bits which are very affecting.
• 7:52
  Dino Rick's fantastic.
• 7:53
  Telly Savalas is the best Blofeld by 100 Miles.
• 7:57
  It's wonderful.
• 7:58
  And it's sad.
• 7:59
  It's so strangely melancholy, isn't it?
• 8:01
  I just love it to death.
• 8:03
  Hello.
• 8:04
  Have we started?
• 8:04
  I guess we have.
• 8:05
  I'm afraid that's all we've got time for.
• 8:13
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• 8:14
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• 8:17
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• 8:18
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• 8:28
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• 8:32
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• 8:34
  But I'm not being perversive, but, you know, he's not...
• 8:38
  They thought they could just get another Connery, and then Connery was happily, properly able to say, well, look what's happened.
• 8:45
  But it's awful.
• 8:47
  It did make a lot of money.
• 8:49
  It's just this awful thing is dismissed.
• 8:51
  But now, of course, it's completely...
• 8:53
  So many people love it.
• 8:54
  Christopher Nolan and Steven Soderbergh.
• 8:57
  I just saw The Odyssey at the weekend, and I was...
• 8:59
  I really, I was surprised by how weird it is.
• 9:03
  I was thrilled.
• 9:04
  It's a weird film.
• 9:05
  The practical effects, fantastic.
• 9:08
  It's a curious thing.
• 9:09
  The pigs, I love that.
• 9:11
  But it's absolutely not a shred of laughs in it.
• 9:14
  Not shred.
• 9:15
  I mean, it's always like that, isn't it?
• 9:18
  Grey faced, somber.
• 9:20
  And I thought, how come it's got 375 locations and they all look the same?
• 9:26
  All the coastlines.
• 9:28
  Was it Scotland?
• 9:30
  It looked like Scotland.
• 9:31
  Then it definitely wasn't, but it still looked like Scotland.
• 9:34
  Curiously small film for a huge film.
• 9:37
  Yeah.
• 9:38
  But I did enjoy it.
• 9:40
  But what really struck me was...
• 9:43
  There were three trailers with it for The Uprising, which is about what, Tyler?
• 9:48
  Weowulf and The Death of Robin Hood, which all appeared to be in the same muddy medieval world.
• 9:56
  And I thought, where's all the joy?
• 9:59
  There's no, we're a long way from Errol Flynn here.
• 10:02
  But there was like, fucking, I'm sick.
• 10:04
  And it once would have been my absolute meat and drink, anything grim and medieval.
• 10:09
  I'm sick to death of it.
• 10:10
  What a bit of colour.
• 10:12
  And the Odyssey, despite everything, was still basically an orange and teal film, wasn't it?
• 10:16
  There was a lot of that in there, yeah.
• 10:18
  That's the end of my TED talk.
• 10:20
  Well, I remember you saying something similar, actually just linking that in...
• 10:23
  It's very quiet.
• 10:24
  He doesn't agree.
• 10:28
  Good.
• 10:29
  You're amongst friends here.
• 10:31
  I remember you saying something similar actually about Bond with Brett Goldstein where you said like Bond has been very serious for a long time now and in good films and not so good films and maybe what we need now is, and maybe just even more broadly beyond Bond is just an injection of singular humour.
• 10:48
  The world's fucked.
• 10:48
  We all need a bit of a laugh, don't we?
• 10:50
  And it's like, it doesn't have to be silly.
• 10:53
  You don't have to have a tiger hunt with Barbara Woodhouse.
• 10:56
  You can just have a bit more fun, and that's what... And I'm afraid to say I don't think Denis Villeneuve and Stephen Knight are the people who are going to provide so many laughs.
• 11:08
  I'm afraid it's going to be Craig 2.0, that is.
• 11:10
  Yeah, I'm feeling the same.
• 11:12
  I think it will be... My expectation is it will be like a really good, solid one-off film, because Denis Villeneuve...
• 11:17
  I think he's made some great stuff, and I think he'll do a good job, but then where does it...
• 11:21
  I don't know where it will go next after that.
• 11:22
  Well, possibly to another auteur, but in terms of...
• 11:25
  Well, my fear, like Star Wars, they'll just bleed it to death.
• 11:30
  There'll be a Moneypenny spinoff.
• 11:31
  There'll be a Q spinoff.
• 11:32
  There'll be young James Bond.
• 11:33
  Before you know it, it won't feel special at all, and everyone will be sick to death of it.
• 11:39
  That's the cash model, unfortunately, isn't it?
• 11:41
  Yeah, the capitalist model.
• 11:42
  And also because Jeff Bezos is a Bond villain, what do they do about that?
• 11:47
  He even looks a bit like Blofeld, doesn't he?
• 11:49
  They all look like Bobblins.
• 11:50
  Yeah.
• 11:51
  I think that's what's happened to a lot of different franchises in the last 10 years.
• 11:54
  Star Wars being the most notable one.
• 11:56
  It does become a cash cow inevitably.
• 11:58
  Never give people what they want.
• 12:00
  Give them what they need?
• 12:01
  Is that what the artist is supposed to do?
• 12:03
  Not what they want, what they need.
• 12:04
  I remember Alan Moore once said that.
• 12:06
  About give people what they need and don't realise what they need.
• 12:09
  Absolutely.
• 12:10
  Yeah.
• 12:11
  With your work then, because you've got, you've had a, I want to say you've had a, and so far you've had a really busy year.
• 12:15
  You've made your RSC debut.
• 12:17
  You've got bookish season two coming out.
• 12:19
  Do you like being busy?
• 12:20
  I do like being busy, yes.
• 12:22
  I find it hard not to be, but not, I hope in a kind of workaholic way.
• 12:28
  Just, I think, well, I went to see Cher a few years ago and I'm not the same age.
• 12:36
  And she said,
• 12:37
  She's like 77 or something.
• 12:40
  And she was, there she was in the stage.
• 12:43
  She said, let me just say this.
• 12:44
  What's your granny doing tonight?
• 12:47
  I was very taken by that.
• 12:49
  But it's not really that.
• 12:52
  Nell Coward said, work is so much more fun than fun.
• 12:55
  And I think that's true.
• 12:56
  I like to have fun through work, I suppose.
• 13:00
  But sometimes it gets a bit crazy.
• 13:01
  It's a bit crazy.
• 13:02
  I've just finished shooting the...
• 13:04
  bookish Christmas special and we start shooting the third series in November wow and I'm still working on the scripts and I've got a couple of months essentially free but they're not free but it's sometimes it's a bit much and then other times it works out really nice really evenly you know but them's the breaks how do you relax when you're not working
• 13:27
  I do podcasts almost relentlessly.
• 13:33
  I paint a bit and I swim.
• 13:35
  I used to run, but I've done my knee in and I've fallen back in love comprehensively with swimming.
• 13:43
  So I swim a lot now.
• 13:45
  I think it's good for you.
• 13:46
  I'm a big fan of swimming.
• 13:47
  But I do, I'm getting into everything.
• 13:49
  Like just as I did with running, you start getting into the stuff, don't you?
• 13:53
  So I'm now investigating this stuff to take away the panda eyes.
• 13:57
  And also you have to put stuff on your skin because you're constantly exposed to chlorine.
• 14:03
  I think it'll be like some sort of Marvel thing.
• 14:04
  I'll become like chlorine man from being exposed.
• 14:09
  But I like the paraphernalia that goes with it, I suppose.
• 14:12
  It's fun.
• 14:14
  Do you swim with airplugs?
• 14:14
  Yeah.
• 14:15
  No, I can't do that.
• 14:16
  I tried.
• 14:16
  It does bother me because it gets in.
• 14:21
  But I tried it.
• 14:22
  It was like I felt I was suffocating.
• 14:24
  I could hear my breathing and I couldn't do it.
• 14:28
  I waxed ones like the album, like the Odyssey.
• 14:33
  And I just pulled them out after like two lengths.
• 14:36
  I thought, oh God.
• 14:37
  So I've never tried that again.
• 14:38
  Do you?
• 14:39
  Oh, yeah, I find I have to, because I've got my dad's ears, and he has very sort of...
• 14:43
  Does he know?
• 14:46
  I've told him many times, yes, I've bollocked him.
• 14:48
  But he can't hear.
• 14:50
  And he is...
• 14:51
  They're easily irritated, so I have to have the whole works, earplugs, ear calm, all that crap.
• 14:55
  Have you tried... You know you can listen to music now with a thing you can press to your skull.
• 14:59
  No, I didn't.
• 15:00
  You mean like a little clip-in thing?
• 15:02
  Oh, is that what those are?
• 15:02
  Yeah.
• 15:03
  No, I had no idea.
• 15:03
  That's exciting.
• 15:04
  Ask for.
• 15:07
  But yeah, looking back at your work, I mean, I was always a fan, but looking back at it in the run-ups this chat, I mean, there's so much and you've done so much.
• 15:13
  And, you know, of course, you've written, you've acted, you've presented.
• 15:17
  And would you say, I guess the two main areas of, I guess, work, creativity, are acting and writing.
• 15:24
  Would you say that's fair to say?
• 15:25
  Yes.
• 15:25
  And would you say you're an actor who writes or a writer who acts?
• 15:29
  I'd say I'm an actor who writes.
• 15:31
  I think that's how I'd like to think of myself.
• 15:34
  Acting is still my favourite thing.
• 15:36
  I'm always asked the deathless question, which you prefer.
• 15:40
  But it does, it sort of depends.
• 15:42
  I love having, I love the control of writing in a way, you know what I mean?
• 15:46
  Because it's just, you're forging a world.
• 15:49
  Just you sitting there or you and your collaborators sitting there, whatever.
• 15:53
  But, but also I love them getting out from the house and going, doing a play and stuff.
• 15:59
  So it is, it's a difficult, I don't know, unless someone held a gun to my head, I wouldn't like to choose because it's the variety that's kept me interested in going and also provides an awful lot of
• 16:11
  always has an awful lot of job opportunities.
• 16:14
  I am...
• 16:15
  When I was first starting out, I was quite unusual in that I wrote a lot of stuff like the rest of the League of Gentlemen.
• 16:22
  But now it's almost like a prerequisite.
• 16:25
  It would be odd if people...
• 16:27
  young actors weren't also working on producing their own shorts or or writing screenplays it's it's good and i always used to say you know it's a you'd have to wait for the phone to ring or not as much because you're if you're producing stuff constantly creating stuff then it broadens your horizons you know so it's definitely become more common now
• 16:49
  Would you say that's your number one piece of advice for a young actor is to write and to produce and create your own work?
• 16:56
  No, necessarily, because not everyone wants to or can.
• 16:59
  But the creative act, I think, is a huge part of it.
• 17:03
  The late Sam Neill did a wonderful video during lockdown about mental health for actors.
• 17:11
  And it's like saying, if you're a plumber and you're not fixing pipes, you're still a plumber.
• 17:17
  But if you're actually not acting, what are you?
• 17:20
  And I think there's, it was very affecting that.
• 17:22
  And, and I think, um,
• 17:26
  some kind of creativity is crucial.
• 17:29
  Also massively important to, to have something to feed off.
• 17:35
  So if you're not, if you're an unemployed actor, don't sit at home staring at the wall and waiting for the phone to ring because it mostly won't.
• 17:43
  But if you're doing something else, you give off a different energy.
• 17:47
  You can talk about things when you come into an audition, you,
• 17:51
  and someone says what you've been up to, don't tell them the truth.
• 17:55
  But even if it's just what your journey was like, be positive.
• 17:59
  It comes off people in waves, I think, in my experience.
• 18:03
  So I would just recommend people do stuff.
• 18:06
  Keep busy.
• 18:07
  Yeah.
• 18:08
  So going back to your work, the first thing I would have seen of yours when I was a kid, and I mentioned this briefly, I think, when we were coming in, but it would have been Doctor Who, of course.
• 18:17
  When you were a kid.
• 18:18
  When I was a kid.
• 18:19
  I'm so sorry.
• 18:20
  I always feel guilty saying this when people have thought.
• 18:23
  But yes, when I was a child, I was freaked the hell out by The Unquiet Dead, which is your first episode, Doctor Who, with Chris Fackleston.
• 18:32
  The...
• 18:33
  Charles Dickens episode with the Gelf.
• 18:35
  And when we had Steven Moffat on the podcast recently, I asked him about the excitement he felt when bringing the show back in 2005, because you guys had been lifelong fans and he was saying just how exciting it was bringing the show back in 2005 when he was doing Empty Child.
• 18:51
  And then for you, of course, also being a lifelong fan, I wanted to ask, what are your memories of that time and of bringing back that show and the excitement that you surely must have felt bringing back Doctor Who?
• 19:01
  It's hard, it's 20 years ago,
• 19:04
  but I remember everything about it because it was impossible.
• 19:09
  I remember I'd just gone to bed and my friend rang me and said, are you sitting down?
• 19:16
  I said, no, I'm in bed.
• 19:16
  He said, Doctor, who's coming back?
• 19:18
  I said, what do you mean?
• 19:20
  He went, it is, it is.
• 19:23
  And then there was a great rush of news in like 24 hours.
• 19:26
  Wow.
• 19:28
  And I never, honestly, I never thought it would come back.
• 19:30
  You've probably read this somewhere, but I had a moment of absolute great melancholy about a year before, if that.
• 19:42
  If that, thinking about it.
• 19:44
  It was probably the same year, summer of the same year maybe.
• 19:48
  And I was going on holiday to Ireland.
• 19:50
  And we got the ferry.
• 19:54
  And by bizarre coincidence, we drove through a village called Slangollen in Wales.
• 19:59
  World's largest Doctor Who exhibition.
• 20:01
  I said, stop the car.
• 20:04
  And we had hours to kill.
• 20:06
  And I'd never heard of it.
• 20:09
  And we went to this exhibition and...
• 20:12
  And Bessie was there, John Pertwee's car.
• 20:16
  But it was this ramshackle exhibition.
• 20:18
  And I think, I'm not exaggerating, I think it was going to close like on the Monday.
• 20:23
  And it was just weird, random collections, Colin Baker's coat, John Pertwee's trousers.
• 20:31
  It was, and it was fly blown and rather sad.
• 20:34
  And there were like six people going through with these kids.
• 20:37
  And I just thought, it's the end.
• 20:43
  And I was just very, I felt, well, you know, it's an amazing run, but this must be it now.
• 20:49
  And then I think the news came about three months later.
• 20:53
  But the beginning of all that was, it was just head spinningly thrilling.
• 20:58
  The idea of what it might be, what...
• 21:02
  what a new version could be, what Russell would do, you know, and then getting the call, which was Christmas 2003, it must have been, from Russell just, and I'd definitely been, I think I'd been sent an outline, episode three was called The Name's Dickens, Charles Dickens, and he asked me to do that, and I was like, this is the best thing to ever happen to me.
• 21:27
  And, you know, what is genuinely this distance interests me, intrigues me is that I suppose in your head, and this is always the way, in my head, somehow or other, we were going to be doing it like the Curse of Peladon.
• 21:45
  And it's a brand new show.
• 21:47
  And that's what you have to get used to.
• 21:50
  And for all the nostalgia inside you, you have, and that's what Russell did so utterly brilliantly, was going, he's a big break from the past.
• 21:59
  You know, the Doctor's the last of the Time Lords.
• 22:02
  No one knows what's happened.
• 22:04
  Deal with it.
• 22:05
  And for a brand new audience...
• 22:07
  That's what you want.
• 22:08
  That's what you do now.
• 22:09
  Whatever's going to happen.
• 22:10
  You just need to have a fire break.
• 22:13
  You know, find a brand new audience.
• 22:16
  Start again.
• 22:17
  Who knows?
• 22:18
  Why not?
• 22:19
  The numbering's all fucked.
• 22:21
  So, but it doesn't matter.
• 22:23
  Anyway, it doesn't matter.
• 22:24
  Of course it doesn't matter.
• 22:25
  Why should it?
• 22:26
  You know, Superman had the crisis of infinite worlds thousands of years ago, didn't it?
• 22:31
  It's fine.
• 22:32
  It's a multiverse.
• 22:33
  If you want to explain it, that's what we sit in dark rooms for.
• 22:37
  But for the mass audience, it doesn't matter.
• 22:39
  Two pins.
• 22:41
  Absolutely doesn't.
• 22:43
  Someone turns up.
• 22:44
  There's a man in a junkyard with a blue box.
• 22:46
  That's it.
• 22:48
  so that was the that was the prospect that's what we were looking at you know and that's what was so thrilling but I do remember funny you mentioned I just remembered um
• 23:00
  Russell took me and Stephen and Rob Shearman and Paul Cornell out for an Indian.
• 23:11
  It was called, the restaurant was called The Chula, which I think is referenced, isn't it?
• 23:17
  In The Empty Child, yeah.
• 23:19
  And Stephen...
• 23:24
  had a drink and he pitched this story for the empty child, which was not a tall story that it became.
• 23:32
  I remember that very well.
• 23:33
  The doctor was dead in it, in a, in a, as I remember, in a kind of, in a, in a like frozen or something.
• 23:41
  or he was in a funeral home.
• 23:43
  It all took place in a massive flashback or something like that.
• 23:46
  And I remember thinking, and then he said the next day, Russell says he doesn't like it at all.
• 23:51
  But then, because Stephen's a genius, he just reinvented it on the spot.
• 23:57
  I'd forgotten all about that, but I do remember that distinctly.
• 23:59
  There was a night when we all, we were just high on the thing of it, you know.
• 24:05
  And so he just pitched that on, he had that story in the back of his mind and he pitched it on his foot.
• 24:10
  I think so.
• 24:10
  Wow.
• 24:10
  I don't know if he ever revisited that, the Doctor being, well, I mean, he's killed off the Doctor or maybe killed off the Doctor a number of times.
• 24:15
  I remember something about it being sort of a flashback, but it was a long time ago.
• 24:24
  Well, with the Unquiet Dead thing, so, because when Stephen was on, he was talking about how Russell gave him, essentially gave him an outline, a brief for The Empty Child, which he then ran with and made it his own.
• 24:33
  And was it a similar thing with you and Unquiet Dead?
• 24:35
  Was it, they gave you an outline?
• 24:37
  Yes, there was a sort of thing about, I think I remember from that original brief, there was an outline about Dickens going, I'm not sure if going to Cardiff was part of it.
• 24:46
  It probably was.
• 24:47
  There was certainly something about,
• 24:51
  the monster being in the walls.
• 24:57
  I don't know, I don't know whether there's something about medium.
• 24:59
  I can't remember.
• 24:59
  I've got it somewhere.
• 25:01
  And I've become one of those hateful people who says, I have a recording of it somewhere.
• 25:06
  And then everybody else salivates and then they fail to find it.
• 25:11
  But I do have that.
• 25:11
  Someone will have it.
• 25:13
  Russell will have it.
• 25:14
  But I was sort of largely left to my own devices initially.
• 25:19
  And then, you know, and then the truth is it's like,
• 25:23
  you know, as I say, it's like you're suddenly making a new program and you have to think about what that's going to be.
• 25:31
  And happily it worked, you know, but we know now we're on these incredible retrospective things like Michael Gray trying to get it cancelled again.
• 25:39
  I remember when he was announced as coming back, my heart skipped a beat.
• 25:44
  But it turns out it was true.
• 25:46
  My God.
• 25:47
  Oh man.
• 25:48
  Um.
• 25:49
  Worse than Davros.
• 25:50
  But the wonderful thing is it just caught the popular imagination, you know, and, but then in a way you're strapped to this beast, which now has to be fed, you know, and remember Terrence, the great Terrence Dix once being asked about the minutiae of some story and he just said, listen, we were just glad it got on.
• 26:10
  And there's an, there is an aspect of that.
• 26:12
  You're pouring your heart and soul into it, but.
• 26:15
  It's a story machine.
• 26:17
  It eats story.
• 26:19
  And you're doing 10, 12, 13, 14 of them.
• 26:24
  Or Russell or Stephen being in charge of the whole behemoth.
• 26:28
  And so you have to regard it as a job.
• 26:32
  But within that, of course, the core of you is always just still eight and thrilled to bits.
• 26:38
  I've never lost that, and I don't think any of us have in that sense.
• 26:42
  It's come close because it's hard, and you sort of pummel to death with a Dalek sucker, as it were, that some people come close to losing the love.
• 26:54
  But at its heart, it's like the sacred flame of Khan, isn't it?
• 27:01
  Well, I hope this doesn't test your minutiae knowledge too much, but there's always been something with The Unquiet Dead that as a fan I've always been fascinated about, because I know that with that first series there was a lot of, you know, Russell sounded like he was very focused on getting those scripts as good as we could get them because this could be our only shot at the show, bringing it back.
• 27:21
  And with The Unquiet Dead, am I right in saying that there was an original, there was a scene originally, again minutiae here, so apologies,
• 27:28
  There was a scene where the Doctor took Rose.
• 27:32
  So the whole conceit being that the Gelf sort of possesses these gaseous aliens possessing corpses and basically rendering them as zombies.
• 27:40
  And there was a scene where the Doctor takes Rose to the future to show her that this is what happens if we don't stop this.
• 27:46
  Yes, there was.
• 27:48
  Russell specifically requested, basically, the Pyramids of Mars thing for exactly the same reason, which is for a new audience who are asking...
• 27:57
  Well, we know that didn't happen, which is what Sarah asks in Pyramids of Mars.
• 28:02
  And then the doctor shows what the world would be like if Sutec wins.
• 28:06
  And then it was written but never shot, I think, just because there was too much going on.
• 28:12
  But a lot of the early discussions were very much around reinventing.
• 28:21
  You know, the reason...
• 28:21
  I remember getting the writer's original brief and the fact that the Autons were coming through the shop window.
• 28:27
  I was really surprised...
• 28:29
  that Russell for the first story was, was remaking, you know, the most famous bit of spearhead from space.
• 28:36
  But then you think, well, of course he is because it's brilliant and it's the best bit.
• 28:41
  So why not do it?
• 28:42
  Now you can actually smash the windows.
• 28:44
  Um,
• 28:45
  There's a lot of that, as I recall, about, and you're absolutely right, it could have, very much could have been the only shot.
• 28:51
  I know that Russell fought to keep the Daleks back for the middle of the season.
• 28:59
  The BBC were desperate, it's like, start with everything, you know.
• 29:03
  And it's like, no, we've got, you get a second opening night and it absolutely worked.
• 29:07
  Of course it did, by that stage, you know.
• 29:10
  It was an amazing thing to look forward to.
• 29:14
  But the understandable kind of nervousness and panic and no money.
• 29:19
  I mean, you know, none really comparison.
• 29:22
  So it's a miracle really ever happened.
• 29:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:25
  yeah but hey it did and you all pulled it off and i'm just i've always just been fascinated about the idea that like because that sounded like such a bleak thing to show on a kid's program like a future like ruled by these horrible geisha zombies i always read about that i was thinking god and knowing obviously your sort of um pedigree for like writing the macabre and like the creepy but also the funny as well like how you would have done that that would have just been so yeah i was always fascinated i think i remember it was very like
• 29:50
  you know no it wasn't they didn't arrive they arrived in the future and and and the zombies were crowding the the scanner screen like in the old TARDIS it was like it was like no room there's no room it's just full of the dead I can't remember
• 30:08
  You mentioned the Daleks.
• 30:09
  I mean, it's funny, that leads me quite nicely into another bit of minutiae, forgive me, but the nerd, the Whovian minutiae.
• 30:15
  But one of my personal favourite episodes that you wrote, which is much later after Unquiet Dead, is Victory of the Daleks.
• 30:20
  I've always had a soft spot for that episode.
• 30:22
  It's so much fun and it's so playful and adventurous with this setting of Winston Churchill in World War II fighting the Daleks.
• 30:29
  And in that episode, you and Stephen introduced the new Paradigm Daleks, which were quite controversial at the time.
• 30:36
  But these big, new, bulky Daleks, which were different colours.
• 30:39
  You know, you had yellow, you had blue, you had red.
• 30:41
  And I actually have at home.
• 30:43
  I have a little blue one because I love the little blue, I think, scientist or whichever one it is.
• 30:48
  But I loved those Daleks when I was a kid watching that episode.
• 30:51
  Oh, that's interesting.
• 30:52
  I feel like I was maybe one of the few who loved them.
• 30:55
  Definitely.
• 30:55
  Yeah.
• 30:56
  But with that, I want to say, I remember watching an interview with you, I think it was Dot Too Confidential, and you said that there was a whole plan for those Daleks.
• 31:04
  They each had their own roles, they had identities, you know, you have the Supreme, the main one, you had scientists and strategists, again, nerd alert, but you had a whole sort of plan for those.
• 31:13
  Is that right?
• 31:13
  There was a schematic for what those...
• 31:16
  They were meant to, you know, be the new ones, but it just didn't work.
• 31:19
  I do, I mean, to be frank, I was full of disquieting.
• 31:24
  and I should have said something, I don't know whether it would have happened, but they've never really been redesigned.
• 31:30
  You know, the 2005 version is this fantastic kind of brassy uplift, but I was worried about that hump.
• 31:40
  And I thought, I think, and what I really wanted was that the size of the ones in the Peter Cushing movies are just bigger and bolder.
• 31:48
  And it's colours, again, everything I was saying earlier about the world becoming colourless.
• 31:52
  There was something rather lovely about it and a kind of bubblegum quality to them, which I thought we all thought kids would like.
• 32:00
  but you know it just didn't work so you you live and learn and uh they've become this sort of sort of collector's delight in that sense and they have popped up occasionally but they're like a sort of aberration but it was a funny funny thing that and i suppose just
• 32:20
  Law of Diminishing Returns.
• 32:21
  I remember the Radio Times did another Vote Dalek cover, and it was like, oh, it just felt a bit, it was secondhand, you know.
• 32:31
  When they did that, it was the first flush of it coming back, and the Daleks on Westminster Bridge again.
• 32:38
  And then two or three years later doing it again, it felt like, well, we've seen this.
• 32:43
  And I suppose that's the problem with success and bringing something back like that.
• 32:49
  I mean, I'm very fond of the story.
• 32:51
  I mean, they work within the context of them being this new thing.
• 32:56
  I do remember very vividly...
• 33:01
  I went into a dub and when they're first revealed, and I think the Dalek Supreme named them as they came out.
• 33:10
  And I said, this sounds like Miss World.
• 33:12
  I really don't think this is like wearing a fetching off the shoulder number scientist.
• 33:20
  Or like stars in their eyes.
• 33:21
  I think that's where we took off the voiceover.
• 33:24
  I could be wrong, but it's a, but I really enjoy it.
• 33:27
  I love, I love the thing of it.
• 33:28
  I loved Professor Bracewell and the kind of poignancy of that.
• 33:32
  And also just this cause of the fun of it, you know, as I said, it, to me, it's like a bank holiday, Doctor Who, it's Spitfires in space.
• 33:40
  And I remember the read through, um, uh, when it got to the bit of the Spitfires and Steven went, this is television.
• 33:51
  Well, of course, you were playing one of the RF pilots.
• 33:53
  Oh, yes.
• 33:53
  I was forced into that.
• 33:55
  Yeah.
• 33:55
  Well, were you not originally lined up for that?
• 33:58
  I think I was just at the dub and they asked me if I'd do it.
• 34:01
  I said, of course, I'll do it.
• 34:03
  Any excuse.
• 34:04
  I've been picked to be a doctor 38 times.
• 34:07
  Well, you've acted a doctor multiple times.
• 34:08
  You were playing some brigadiers.
• 34:10
  Well, when I, I remember literally my first meeting proper about the Unquiet Dead was,
• 34:19
  Again, because it was like, it was like everything at once.
• 34:21
  It was a place called Center House opposite TV Center, which is now gone.
• 34:26
  It was a condemned building for so long.
• 34:28
  It outlasted almost everything, but it's finally gone.
• 34:32
  And I said to Russell, I've got to be in it as well.
• 34:35
  And he said, we'll find something for you.
• 34:38
  But you know, everyone was desperate.
• 34:40
  This might be it.
• 34:41
  And then when I got the call to do the Lazarus experiment, that was the second, the next best day of my life.
• 34:47
  And, uh,
• 34:49
  I, my agent had just left and I inherited David Tennant's agent.
• 34:55
  And I was in the back of a cab and the phone rang and she said, darling, do you want to go to Cardiff to do Doctor Who?
• 35:03
  And I said, I leaned over and said, don't crash this car.
• 35:10
  and that the last day of shooting was my 40th birthday and it was i couldn't believe it but i think i've said this many times but it's the same thing as working on the show
• 35:21
  I thought of nothing else since I was a child and it was actually happening.
• 35:25
  But I've known David for years.
• 35:27
  I knew almost everyone involved.
• 35:30
  And then you got to go, there's a call sheet.
• 35:32
  There's a trailer.
• 35:33
  It's, it's like any other job.
• 35:35
  And you're sort of waiting for something to hit, which makes it feel like the curse of Peladon.
• 35:41
  You're going, oh, I mean, Doctor Who, what's, this is Doctor Who, isn't it?
• 35:44
  What's happening?
• 35:45
  But I'm just doing, I'm here.
• 35:48
  But it's, and then amazingly it hit me, the Saturday nightness of it hit me when I'm in the Lazarus machine and they had to fill it up with dry ice like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now.
• 36:03
  And the first assistant director said, I'm going to have to lock you, shut you in, Mark, so it can fill up.
• 36:11
  And the door shut.
• 36:12
  We're in the middle of the Senate building in Wales, in Cardiff.
• 36:16
  And I was alone in my tuxedo and the mist rising.
• 36:22
  And I suddenly thought, fucking hell, I'm in Doctor Who.
• 36:26
  It's true.
• 36:27
  And when I burst out, that's me going, fucking hell, I'm in Doctor Who.
• 36:32
  I remember that.
• 36:34
  I am reborn.
• 36:35
  The energy of that.
• 36:36
  I felt it.
• 36:36
  Yeah.
• 36:38
  Hey, you play, it couldn't, in some ways, it couldn't be a more Mark Gatiss episode or role.
• 36:43
  You're playing essentially, you know, it's a horror movie, that episode of 45 minutes.
• 36:47
  I think it was pitched as like an Avengers comic kind of plot.
• 36:52
  What I do, my favourite memory about the whole thing though, was, this is absolutely true.
• 36:58
  When I was first offered it and sent the script, it said, Lazarus enters the machine, a blonde Adonis.
• 37:07
  No, Lazarus emerges from the machine at Blondadonnis.
• 37:11
  And I said yes.
• 37:12
  And then I got the next draft and it said, Lazarus emerges from the machine.
• 37:17
  It's true.
• 37:18
  Bastards.
• 37:21
  See you in Greenhorn and we'll see you.
• 37:24
  You mentioned Curse of Palladon there.
• 37:26
  I mean, I feel like you've mentioned it, like your love for the classics.
• 37:29
  Is that your favourite classic?
• 37:31
  No, Green Death is my favourite classic.
• 37:33
  All kinds of reasons.
• 37:35
  But I'm very, you know, I think, I can say this now because I'm 108, but I think...
• 37:43
  Well, we've all got Arrested Development, right boys?
• 37:47
  And acknowledging it is a huge part of being at peace with it.
• 37:52
  But you've also, I think, got to let things go.
• 37:55
  I think Doctor Who that I worship is forever in the past.
• 38:00
  Doctor Who that I've worked on and love is a separate thing in my head.
• 38:04
  And I think trying to bind the two together is probably not very healthy for one's mental health.
• 38:12
  And I love that about it.
• 38:14
  I'm fine with it.
• 38:16
  I used to obsessively collect the Target books.
• 38:19
  Obviously, I was a shrine when I was the right age.
• 38:23
  now i have i've framed my favorite covers for the loo and that's where they belong i won't read them again because i'm not eight but what they mean to me is every time i look at them it made me feel happy and that's that's what old doctor who does but my job on it and all our jobs on it totally separate thing i think for me
• 38:46
  Obviously always having that thread to the past, but the thing I enjoyed most about doing Doctor Who was trying to do something new.
• 38:54
  And obviously there's, you know, I bring back old monsters, we all, but it's that thing of like,
• 39:02
  what we all responded to back in the day when Philip Hinchcliffe took over, you know, and the crinoids and the Zygons and the Wirren, brand new monsters.
• 39:12
  And even the Daleks totally reinvented.
• 39:15
  And that boldness is what I really responded to.
• 39:18
  And I sort of surprised myself in that, you know, thinking I was a prisoner of nostalgia, but pushing it forward, doing things like,
• 39:26
  having no titles in Sleep No More.
• 39:29
  And, but that's because I remember, you know, when you look back and see the War Games titles or Inferno and go, it's different, this one, you know.
• 39:40
  And what is essential is to try and make something which the next generation will find nostalgic when they're older.
• 39:45
  Yeah.
• 39:46
  Not being totally a prisoner of the past because it's a good title.
• 39:51
  Prisoner of the past.
• 39:52
  Doctor Who and the Prisoner of the Past.
• 39:54
  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
• 39:56
  So do you think that boldness and that sort of, that sense of, that youthful spirit of like reinvention is something that is key to the show's success?
• 40:03
  Because when Stephen came on, we asked him about, because I think you even mentioned it earlier about where, what the show might need next, whether a complete new refresh, like you guys had in 2005.
• 40:12
  I mean, you were continuing on with The Ninth Doctor, but it was for a new generation.
• 40:17
  And do you think now moving forward, is that something that the show needs moving forward next?
• 40:21
  Personally, I think it should stop.
• 40:22
  Really?
• 40:23
  Really?
• 40:25
  I think it should rest for a good while because I don't think there is I don't think there's the will I mean I could be totally wrong you're only as good as your last success so it could come back massively strongly and all this evaporates but I just feel like
• 40:45
  There's a reason why that gap after it was originally cancelled and a brief one night only.
• 40:53
  But that length of time somehow meant people really missed it.
• 40:57
  Those who remembered it really missed it.
• 40:59
  Those who never heard of it, it was their show.
• 41:01
  And somehow you need a bit of a space.
• 41:04
  I don't know how long, but I mean, it's happening anyway, isn't it?
• 41:08
  How long it goes on, I don't know, but...
• 41:10
  personally but then if if and when and having come back once I think it will come back why wouldn't it because it's a classic idea it's a brilliant concept but then absolutely divest yourself of of any baggage start again
• 41:29
  It's simple.
• 41:31
  And it doesn't, you know, as I say, it's for us in dark rooms to try and sew it together.
• 41:35
  What's always massively intrigued me about Doctor Who fans, myself included, is how some stuff is absolutely holy writ and other stuff is like this.
• 41:47
  Right.
• 41:48
  So the doctor can regenerate 12 times 13 physical forms.
• 41:52
  Right.
• 41:53
  the fact that there were other doctors before William Hartnell, definitely what Morbius is talking about, didn't happen.
• 42:00
  The doctor's half human on his mother's side.
• 42:02
  No, he's not.
• 42:04
  Why is this?
• 42:05
  This one is like, I don't want to hear that.
• 42:09
  But it's true, isn't it?
• 42:10
  So if, when Dallas came back,
• 42:18
  to use a strange example.
• 42:20
  The last episode of Dallas, Larry Hagman is visited by a strange man, played by Joel Grey, who turns out to be the devil.
• 42:26
  It's like a strange version of It's a Wonderful Life where he shows him life without him, where Cliff becomes president and all these things.
• 42:36
  And then he turns out to be the devil at the end and it ends with a bang of J.R. shooting himself.
• 42:41
  That's the end of Dallas.
• 42:43
  It came back 15, 20 years later and J.R. says...
• 42:48
  I saw a lot of crazy shit that night.
• 42:50
  Because he'd been drinking, you know.
• 42:53
  So in the future, if someone wants to explain why the doctor turns into Billy Piper, it's easy.
• 42:59
  But equally easy is not to bother.
• 43:01
  Because it doesn't really matter.
• 43:03
  Of course it doesn't.
• 43:04
  There's always an explanation.
• 43:06
  I've already thought of 18 of them.
• 43:09
  You know, but the crucial thing and the reason why the TV movie stumbles immediately is they try and make it for all the audiences at once.
• 43:20
  Whereas the crucial audience was the brand new audience.
• 43:23
  You start.
• 43:26
  An episode of Doctor Who inside the TARDIS talking about the Master and the Daleks.
• 43:31
  Lost.
• 43:32
  Why would you not be?
• 43:33
  Again, going back to the brilliance of that first episode, 2005...
• 43:40
  Billy Piper runs in.
• 43:43
  We don't see anything.
• 43:44
  We see her face.
• 43:46
  She runs around the police box to show us how big it is.
• 43:50
  And then we go in.
• 43:51
  Job done.
• 43:52
  You know?
• 43:53
  Brilliant.
• 43:54
  How to do it.
• 43:55
  So that's what I would do is start again.
• 43:59
  And, you know, shrug it all off.
• 44:02
  And I remember Russell at the press launch of season one.
• 44:12
  And we showed clips from Rose and it had the Tom Baker titles on.
• 44:18
  It wasn't even ready.
• 44:19
  I remember that distinctly.
• 44:20
  But he did a little speech and he said, basically, after a show, any show has been on for 26 years, it will acquire a lot of baggage.
• 44:27
  And when a show has been back for 21 years, it will do exactly the same thing.
• 44:31
  So the key is to capture an audience who've never heard of it.
• 44:39
  If you get people along the way who remember it, for whom David or Peter or Jodie or whoever were their doctor, great.
• 44:48
  And if you get people way back who remember Tom Baker, even better, because then you've got the whole lot.
• 44:54
  But crucially,
• 44:56
  My favourite thing about, I think my entire time working at Doctor Who, was going to a friend's wedding just after Robot at Sherwood had been on and two little boys having a spoon fight because of it.
• 45:09
  And I thought that's all I ever wanted, was to inspire someone in the playground, really.
• 45:15
  Well, Stephen was talking about that exact thing when we asked him about the empty child and he said, the Are You My Mummy was exactly that for him.
• 45:23
  Yeah, hearing kids in the playground saying, Are You My Mummy all over the place.
• 45:27
  Yeah.
• 45:28
  It sounds like he had a similar moment.
• 45:30
  All that means, well, you can hope for.
• 45:31
  I also remember going on Radio 4 to defend the scariness of the Unquiet Dead.
• 45:37
  And Eddie Mayer it was.
• 45:39
  And I said, he said, how do you react to this?
• 45:42
  I said, well, I'm thrilled.
• 45:43
  My job's done.
• 45:45
  That's course it is.
• 45:46
  You telling me that I've scared the nation with Doctor Who?
• 45:50
  And that's good.
• 45:52
  Mission accomplished.
• 45:53
  Well, I can attest that you said that.
• 45:56
  Another great project of yours that has such a huge love and following is, of course, Sherlock.
• 46:02
  I thought we were only talking about Doctor Who.
• 46:04
  I mean it's been at least the first 10 hours well don't get wrong we could we could just make this about it too but I mean the other great work you've done as well I mean with Sherlock um which of course we talked to about with Stephen as well when he came on the pod uh as I say that is such a following and you have such a role in the development the creation and the writing but also of course you know the presentation you are Mycroft in that show
• 46:31
  When did you realise When you were creating that show with Stephen And I guess Steve Thompson as well Did you realise that you wanted to play Mycroft, like Mycroft was going to be your part It was a funny thing I had recently auditioned To play Peter Mandelson And we talked Explicitly about how Mandelsonian Mycroft was as a figure You know, the power behind the throne And I played a lot Of those kind of parts And then
• 47:00
  We were having a script meeting somewhere and I think Steven just said, why don't you do it?
• 47:11
  And I definitely remember like Richard III refusing the crown, just going, I couldn't possibly.
• 47:17
  Made them ask again and again.
• 47:18
  And then it just sort of happened.
• 47:20
  So it was, it was cheaper.
• 47:24
  Yeah.
• 47:26
  No, that's, that's definitely how it happened.
• 47:28
  And then, but, you know, because we were so inspired by Billy Wilder's Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, which is our template, really, in so many ways, tonally, but particularly about the relationship between the two brothers being much more antagonistic than it is in the stories.
• 47:44
  And also Mycroft not being obese in that one.
• 47:50
  that, I don't know, it just seemed like a natural thing to do.
• 47:53
  It's funny, isn't it?
• 47:54
  I often think about who it might have been if it wasn't me.
• 47:59
  We never really got that far.
• 48:00
  I was curious.
• 48:01
  I mean, obviously, as you know, we made a sort of pilot, which wasn't officially a pilot.
• 48:06
  We just, when they said, when the BBC said, yes, the easiest pitch in the history of television, Julie Gardner, modern Sherlock Holmes, yes, she said.
• 48:19
  And that was that.
• 48:21
  But we, so we, we had the last pot of money for the year.
• 48:24
  We made it.
• 48:26
  And then when it was then commissioned properly as, and we were in a, we were in a script meeting on possibly the read through of victory of the Daleks.
• 48:35
  Yeah.
• 48:36
  when the call came through from Sue Virtue saying, they'll say yes if we do three 90s, and we said yes.
• 48:42
  And that was because Wallander was in that form, so that's why that was the format, because that worked.
• 48:50
  And then rethinking the first one, expanding it, and bringing in Mycroft as part of that, that was the thinking.
• 48:59
  So, yeah, funny.
• 49:01
  Yeah.
• 49:01
  Yeah, because in Studying Pink, when you go back and look at it, you realise that there's a whole little ploy there, bait and switch, where you think Mycroft could be more nasty.
• 49:08
  Well, I'm not credited specifically because it would be published in advance and it would ruin the joke, and I can't bear that.
• 49:15
  So I wasn't credited at all.
• 49:18
  So that, you know, I even say he possibly regards me as his archer and it gets ridiculous like that, things people never really say.
• 49:26
  But yeah, and then it's a surprise.
• 49:28
  And then, you know, start talking about our mummy.
• 49:31
  And then off we go.
• 49:32
  And John's just like, what the fuck is going on?
• 49:35
  And I did want to zone in on that, actually, if I may, because you're there with Benedict, of course, playing Sherlock, and Martin playing John so brilliantly.
• 49:44
  And there's a really interesting, there's obviously incredible chemistry between them two, but then the three of you, I mean, across the four seasons of Sherlock, you guys explore, you and Stephen explore that dynamic dynamic,
• 49:55
  and with the other characters as well, but you explore that little trio so well, I mean, leading all the way up to the last episode.
• 50:00
  And when you look back now, like, what are your memories of working specifically with those two of Benedict and Martin, and what their energies were?
• 50:06
  Because they strike me as being quite different as actors.
• 50:09
  Well, I was very drunk throughout.
• 50:11
  No, yeah, they are very different approaches, you know.
• 50:16
  But it was very...
• 50:19
  It was a very combustible show, you know what I mean?
• 50:22
  Because it became like an instant hit.
• 50:26
  And I've often said this, but it's the sort of thing that's not supposed to happen, you know.
• 50:31
  But Benedict, we watched Benedict become a star overnight.
• 50:35
  It was like a supernova.
• 50:36
  It was like...
• 50:37
  And it just happened.
• 50:38
  And suddenly there were only three of them, and everyone was going, where's the rest of it?
• 50:42
  And you have to wait ages, you know.
• 50:44
  And we were supposed to be on in September.
• 50:47
  We had a Radio Times cover, and then they pulled it forward to the summer, traditionally a death slot.
• 50:53
  And then it got 10 million viewers.
• 50:55
  And everything changed.
• 50:57
  All the rules, nobody knows anything.
• 50:59
  Everything changed.
• 51:00
  And suddenly they were desperate for more.
• 51:02
  And we were, you know,
• 51:03
  more than recommissioned it was like this is a thing and it was giggying of course it was straight away and you're thinking well what do we do now we've got to we've got to we've got to carry on and embrace the scale of this thing um but yes it it was it was it was very hard work
• 51:25
  Uh, because of that, not really external pressure, just the fact that you're kind of, it's like being strapped to a sort of waltzer.
• 51:32
  It's like, off we go.
• 51:34
  And waltzers go round and round.
• 51:36
  I meant to rollercoaster.
• 51:40
  And that, particularly around the Reichenbach fall, and that was an extraordinary time, a pinch-me time of, like, you know, being nostalgic for the moment you're in because you're aware this is not going to happen again.
• 51:57
  And we deliberately lied about whether it was coming back
• 52:03
  so that everyone could get to the end, Benedict falling off the building and then appearing at the graveside.
• 52:10
  And we were watching it at Martin's house and our phones just went crazy.
• 52:14
  And then we would go, of course it's coming back.
• 52:17
  But that period when people were speculating and speculating was kind of my favourite bit because we hadn't done anything to address it.
• 52:24
  But it was just like the world was talking about it.
• 52:27
  It was the closest to what must have happened to Conan Doyle, I suppose.
• 52:30
  Yeah.
• 52:30
  yeah um but yeah it was it was it was a wonderful thing life-changing but but the same with doctor who it's it's also hard work and a job and i don't want to sound at all pejorative about that because christ literally all i ever wanted as a kid was to be work on doctor who and work on sherlock hove's
• 52:51
  But it's a lot of stuff, a lot of tough decisions, hard work.
• 52:57
  And Benedict and Martin were both really extraordinary leading men to have on that show.
• 53:04
  And world beating, I would say, you know.
• 53:07
  And it worked, you know, and I think I've often said this, but sometimes all the planets align.
• 53:14
  As William Goldman said, nobody knows anything.
• 53:16
  You could spend your life trying to push a catchphrase or a notion of or a vision of something and people just aren't interested.
• 53:25
  But somehow or other, at that moment, everything was right.
• 53:29
  And when we were doing the pilot, I was so depressed that Robert Downey Jr. was about to do the film.
• 53:37
  It was announced while we were doing the pilot.
• 53:39
  And there hadn't been a Sherlock Holmes for donkey's years.
• 53:42
  And I went, oh, not now.
• 53:43
  And I thought, it doesn't matter.
• 53:44
  And of course it doesn't matter.
• 53:46
  Because your version is your version.
• 53:48
  People respond to it or they don't.
• 53:51
  And they really, as we know, the world went kind of crazy for it.
• 53:56
  I remember it well.
• 53:57
  I was one of the fans, yeah.
• 54:00
  And what do you think was, because I hear everything you say about how it was fantastic, but it was also, it was hard work.
• 54:05
  I mean, what was the hardest thing about making Sherlock for you?
• 54:10
  I guess it wasn't, it wasn't, well, first of all, it was kind of,
• 54:18
  Getting people to buy into the concept, which to us seemed very straightforward because Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce had already done it.
• 54:29
  But I, I do remember a screening of the first one, literally overhearing a journalist saying, we've got to say something bad about it.
• 54:38
  Isn't that awful?
• 54:40
  They were trying to find, it was like, this is really good.
• 54:42
  What can, what dirt can we find on it?
• 54:45
  but, but,
• 54:48
  after people got it, as soon as they saw it, they got it.
• 54:51
  And when we were talking about it, somehow or other, they struggled, you know, to the ludicrous extent that when we did the Christmas Victorian one, the show within the show, literally someone from the press said, how can Sherlock Holmes exist in a world without iPhones?
• 55:08
  And I went, I don't know.
• 55:09
  We're through the looking glass here.
• 55:11
  Do you remember?
• 55:14
  But it obviously meant we'd done something right.
• 55:17
  But initially it was that.
• 55:21
  And then as a proof of concept was the show.
• 55:23
  And then people totally bought into it.
• 55:25
  That essentially it was a flat share between two young men.
• 55:29
  One of whom is a genius who live above a cafe and solve crimes, you know.
• 55:37
  And then I guess...
• 55:40
  Something of the kind of pressure of expectation, inevitably.
• 55:46
  I would say, being honest, I think we probably shouldn't have killed Moriarty so early because we ended up bringing back poor Andrew so many times in virtual forms.
• 55:57
  But what we, it's a bit like the first season of Doctor Who, you kind of go, let's not delay the pleasure.
• 56:03
  Let's just do the big ones right now.
• 56:06
  And,
• 56:07
  And there is a lot of virtue in that.
• 56:09
  It just means that your sort of shelf life is shorter because where do you go after that?
• 56:15
  So possibly we...
• 56:18
  But they were film, you know, they were movie length and they're big beasts.
• 56:22
  That's what was the hard word.
• 56:23
  They're big beasts to try and tackle.
• 56:25
  You're not talking about half an hour or an hour even.
• 56:29
  It's six hours is a very different prospect to three 90s.
• 56:32
  Interesting.
• 56:33
  So you're thinking in a bigger scale, even if you haven't got the money for it, you're thinking more like epic in terms of storyline and what big thing could happen.
• 56:44
  I do remember, this is so depressing, one review saying, why can't it be more ordinary?
• 56:51
  I thought, what a lofty ambition that is.
• 56:54
  By which they meant, why can't it be, you know, case of the week?
• 56:57
  Someone comes in with it.
• 56:59
  And that is Sherlock Holmes.
• 57:00
  But look, we were lucky to have the keys to Baker Street for a bit.
• 57:04
  And that was our version.
• 57:07
  You know, and people largely loved it.
• 57:10
  Yeah.
• 57:10
  Oh yeah.
• 57:11
  And, but, but that did, did make me, that does make me curious to ask like, what would you, if you were to revisit Sherlock again, which people have, I mean, Steven even was talking about it to us.
• 57:19
  He said that he'd love to go back.
• 57:20
  I mean, if you were to revisit Sherlock, what do you think you'd do differently?
• 57:25
  I think I'd start in the junkyard.
• 57:28
  oh no Totter's Lane I don't know well I know it would be in a similar way you just I always used to joke that you know having done the thing which is in the first story of Doyle I don't know
• 57:46
  which is never really done, which is they're men in their 30s who share a flat.
• 57:51
  But what we mostly see them as is middle-aged men, very stolid or more stolid seeming.
• 57:56
  That if you were to go back, all you do is a knock on the door.
• 58:02
  Dr. Watson hasn't seen his friend for 20 years.
• 58:06
  And he says, do you want to come out to play?
• 58:08
  That's really it.
• 58:09
  Because what you would be doing is representing it again for a brand new audience, just as with Doctor Who.
• 58:15
  Now, again, if you're lucky, if you were to do it, you'd have a lot of people who love the show.
• 58:19
  But now, if we did it, it's 10 years, isn't it?
• 58:24
  It's 10 years.
• 58:25
  So nearly 10 years.
• 58:26
  So, you know, telly moves on, people move on.
• 58:30
  So if you were to do it, you would be necessarily addressing it in the audience.
• 58:36
  And that's completely correct.
• 58:38
  Why should you be bothered by any of the continuity?
• 58:41
  You don't even have to make a mistake.
• 58:42
  You just have to not mention it.
• 58:45
  Well Stephen was saying that he would, that exact thing, that he would, if he would love to do it again and he would love to bring them back as their middle-aged versions and explore that side of their lives.
• 58:53
  Well we'd have no choice there.
• 58:56
  Unless we enuthified them.
• 58:59
  The Irishman style.
• 59:01
  My favourite of that was, I caught a bit of, is it X-Men Last Stand where Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were done?
• 59:10
  Yes.
• 59:10
  And they both look, they look like eggs.
• 59:13
  It's just totally smooth.
• 59:15
  No one had any wrinkles in the past.
• 59:18
  At the beginning where they're visiting Jean Grey, I want to say.
• 59:19
  I think Patrick, Paul Patrick had that twice in X-Men Origins Wolverine as well.
• 59:23
  He comes in for a cameo and they did the exact same thing.
• 59:26
  You know, it's just, you know, it's the way of the future, isn't it?
• 59:28
  I saw Abba Voyage yesterday and it's exactly the same with the...
• 59:30
  It's great though, isn't it?
• 59:31
  Have you seen it?
• 59:32
  I've seen it three times.
• 59:35
  It's Voyage, by the way, not Voyage.
• 59:36
  It's a Voyage.
• 59:36
  We've been calling it Voyage.
• 59:37
  It's just Voyage.
• 59:38
  It's just Voyage.
• 59:40
  I tell you what, my partner is an obsessive ABBA fan.
• 59:44
  He was there on opening night when they come on and then they really come on.
• 59:49
  Yeah, yeah.
• 59:50
  And he was, it's the best night of his life.
• 59:52
  He missed my press night for it.
• 59:53
  But what really impressed me, first of all, it's a fantastic show.
• 1:00:00
  As a light show, it makes you feel 100% better.
• 1:00:02
  Yeah.
• 1:00:04
  And even though some of the CG is still a bit uncanny valley, you can see some of them are early now and some of the later ones much better.
• 1:00:14
  But what is really remarkable is the impression that the band is right in front of you.
• 1:00:19
  I don't mean that band because I know they're real.
• 1:00:22
  When they rise up, I just kept going, look, but they're there.
• 1:00:27
  My mother-in-law has a friend genuinely who thinks that they come on at the end after every show.
• 1:00:34
  And we entertain ourselves with the idea that they're in a travel lodge in Stratford going, come on then.
• 1:00:42
  Just a wave.
• 1:00:44
  Smile and wave.
• 1:00:44
  Come on Bjorn.
• 1:00:49
  it was amazing and the first 10 minutes you spend getting used to it but then you lock in and it's it's just great and obviously when they do Waterloo and all those songs just absolutely loved it they don't do my mother-in-law bless her absolutely cannot grasp what's going on she can't the latest was
• 1:01:11
  She said something like, where did they hang their costumes?
• 1:01:14
  And then the latest was, are they puppets?
• 1:01:17
  They were robots, are they puppets?
• 1:01:19
  I think it's just somehow generationally, she can't work out how it's done.
• 1:01:24
  Nor could I.
• 1:01:26
  I think it's magic.
• 1:01:27
  Is it magic?
• 1:01:29
  One last question on Sherlock.
• 1:01:32
  I want to say that, Amara, I'm thinking that when, so after series four had wrapped and sometime around lockdown, you and Stephen pitched Benedict to Martin a Sherlock film.
• 1:01:41
  Is that right?
• 1:01:41
  We did, yeah.
• 1:01:42
  Yeah.
• 1:01:42
  What would that look like?
• 1:01:43
  A Sherlock film?
• 1:01:44
  I can't tell you that.
• 1:01:46
  as we ever did it didn't happen various reasons it didn't happen I mean mostly it's availability and trying to get everyone you know all our ducks in order but also because it was it was lockdown everyone was desperate for news and something something to plan I suppose it was good
• 1:02:05
  it wasn't it wasn't very formed as I remember it was as more enthusiasm than story but you know never say never as Paul Corry said I mean the the fact that as you say like you're making three films a series so like they're doing like a bigger bigger budget one of those I guess would have been the conceit I sort of
• 1:02:25
  Not really, no.
• 1:02:26
  I mean, if anything, because the great, you know, cliches, they all go on holiday to Spain.
• 1:02:31
  It tends to be the fate of the spin-off film, isn't it?
• 1:02:35
  In order to get scale.
• 1:02:37
  I don't know.
• 1:02:38
  It wasn't really that at all.
• 1:02:39
  It was more, it was more internal.
• 1:02:44
  But I don't know.
• 1:02:45
  You'll have to see.
• 1:02:46
  We'll all have to see.
• 1:02:47
  You'll have to see.
• 1:02:47
  See if we survive this fucking summer without being fried, personally.
• 1:02:53
  Well, it's all sure we will.
• 1:02:54
  It's nice to have things to be ambitious about.
• 1:02:56
  And, I mean, touching on some of the other stuff you've done, I mean, you've done so much.
• 1:03:01
  And so much on a, speaking of scale, you've worked on so many huge scale things.
• 1:03:06
  I mean, I think one would, of course, be Game of Thrones, which I think was around the same time, Michelle, that you came in for a few episodes.
• 1:03:12
  I mean, now that that's sort of in the rearview mirror as well, like what are your memories of working on Game of Thrones?
• 1:03:16
  I can tell you something.
• 1:03:18
  I don't know if I've ever said this publicly, but I'll say it there.
• 1:03:21
  I have never seen Game of Thrones.
• 1:03:24
  You've never seen it?
• 1:03:25
  And I deliberately, when I was off the park, I deliberately didn't watch it.
• 1:03:30
  I hadn't seen it, and I deliberately didn't watch it because, this is a Doctor Who thing, I grew up reading...
• 1:03:40
  interviews with wonderful actors who had very vague memories of the pub that tom baker had taken them to and they'd say things like i think i was in revenge of the daleks and we had a lovely time i didn't understand a word of it but it was such fun and i thought i'd love to have something like that in my life where i have no actual emotional connection to it and that is what i did with game of thrones i did four or five episodes i had a lovely time with everyone
• 1:04:10
  what any of it's about, apart from, you know, through osmosis.
• 1:04:13
  And I do remember going to, actually, I've seen one episode because I went to see, there was a premiere at the Tower of London.
• 1:04:19
  It's the only one I've ever seen.
• 1:04:20
  And on the red carpet, they kept saying, who should be on the Iron Throne?
• 1:04:26
  And I blanked and I went,
• 1:04:27
  Me.
• 1:04:28
  Because I was the only character I knew.
• 1:04:31
  That's true.
• 1:04:32
  That's fabulous.
• 1:04:34
  No, I'm looking forward to it.
• 1:04:35
  I'm going to binge watch it when nobody else is watching it.
• 1:04:38
  And when I guess the end, I'll be very disappointed, honestly.
• 1:04:40
  I know that's what happened.
• 1:04:41
  But you were working with Liam Cunningham and Stephen DeLay.
• 1:04:43
  I mean, great actors.
• 1:04:44
  I mean, Cunningham you'd worked with in Cold War, right?
• 1:04:47
  Yeah.
• 1:04:47
  I mean, what were your memories of working with those guys?
• 1:04:50
  I remember arriving in Belfast and land of my father's and I've known Liam on and off for years.
• 1:05:01
  But it was, I remember it was very, it was a very long process.
• 1:05:06
  We, that first I am bank scene and.
• 1:05:11
  I think we shot every conceivable way short of an endoscope down the throat.
• 1:05:18
  It was like, I can't believe.
• 1:05:20
  But we were all by the end.
• 1:05:21
  We couldn't remember it.
• 1:05:23
  I remember Liam or Stephen sitting behind the camera with the script because we'd done it so many times it starts to become like a word salad.
• 1:05:31
  And then Liam said, did you see that scene?
• 1:05:35
  And I saw him next.
• 1:05:36
  He said, it was like a master, two bids and a close-up.
• 1:05:40
  Of course it was.
• 1:05:41
  That's how television works.
• 1:05:46
  It was great.
• 1:05:47
  It was lovely to be part of it.
• 1:05:50
  Again, there was such a currency at the time.
• 1:05:52
  I remember going to LA to promote Adventure Space and Time with David Bradley and the Red Wedding episode had just been on and David was like a king.
• 1:06:06
  He got off the plane, people were mobbing him because he was so much, I love that.
• 1:06:10
  It's lovely excitement about it.
• 1:06:12
  But I know nothing about it.
• 1:06:16
  That machinery, I guess you were sort of present for that machinery.
• 1:06:19
  Yeah, I remember very well in the first episode I did.
• 1:06:24
  There were, you know, on a unit, a set, there's so many white vans.
• 1:06:29
  And Game of Thrones was so huge.
• 1:06:32
  There were different units like wolf units and in Ireland, hair and makeup are separate units.
• 1:06:40
  And I was, I was led to this caravan to have my
• 1:06:44
  um, Coif, Budon or whatever.
• 1:06:46
  And, and then I said, I'll make my own way back.
• 1:06:49
  And I got so lost that I walked onto another episode.
• 1:06:53
  I thought, I don't know who are these people.
• 1:06:56
  I realized I was in a totally different unit.
• 1:06:58
  It was a vast thing.
• 1:07:00
  I went to Croatia for one.
• 1:07:02
  The one with Lena Headey, which we had such a laugh that day.
• 1:07:05
  Yeah, it was delightful.
• 1:07:08
  But as I say, I can do it now, I can say.
• 1:07:11
  I remember such fun.
• 1:07:14
  It was all a lot of nonsense.
• 1:07:16
  The Gielgud song, I remember, back in the day.
• 1:07:19
  Well, was it a similar thing walking onto a set like, something like Mission Impossible Final Reckoning, of course?
• 1:07:25
  I mean, maybe a different kind of scale, but still huge.
• 1:07:28
  And you're walking on there and it's Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie.
• 1:07:30
  I mean, what was that like?
• 1:07:31
  Terrifying.
• 1:07:32
  But first one, Dead Reckoning.
• 1:07:39
  I did a week on that one and I was so scared that the script was very late and it was all techno babble it was really hard to learn I remember I learnt it like word pictures because some of it was so...
• 1:07:57
  Anyway, you arrive and it's like Bond, you know, it's vast machine, but they couldn't have been more delightful and friendly.
• 1:08:07
  And then I saw Indira Varma across the room and neither of us knew we were in it.
• 1:08:11
  And she looked at me and went, oh, and we kind of clung to each other.
• 1:08:16
  And we were so in awe of the other American actors who were like blue steel
• 1:08:22
  American intensity.
• 1:08:23
  And then within 24 hours, you realise they're shitting themselves as well.
• 1:08:26
  And then it's sort of, is there anyone here not shitting themselves?
• 1:08:29
  Oh, it's Tom.
• 1:08:31
  And then it was just wonderful.
• 1:08:34
  And we had such a, you know, again, it's intense stuff.
• 1:08:37
  That was one big scene.
• 1:08:39
  We were gassed.
• 1:08:40
  And there was one, I remember, I've never seen this before, there was a very high camera.
• 1:08:45
  The clapperboard was like something from,
• 1:08:49
  from the Odyssey.
• 1:08:50
  It was like, it was like Polyphemus's clap.
• 1:08:52
  It was this huge clap.
• 1:08:53
  I've never seen anything like it.
• 1:08:55
  Like a joke clap aboard.
• 1:08:58
  But we had a brilliant time and McHugh, as he's known, and Tom just did great.
• 1:09:05
  And it, I don't know, I've said this many times, but you do get so used to it.
• 1:09:13
  And then every now and then, a bit like going, oh, I'm in Doctor Who.
• 1:09:16
  You just kind of go,
• 1:09:20
  It doesn't make sense.
• 1:09:21
  It's like, like he's come to life, you know?
• 1:09:23
  Yeah.
• 1:09:24
  Um, and then I did the second one, which I was on for a month and again, round a table, lots of chat and it was very hot, but, um, you know, Nick Offerman has become a very good friend of mine and, uh, Janet McTeer, I've known for years.
• 1:09:39
  So,
• 1:09:39
  So it was full of friends and you, the reassuring thing is yet again, in the end it's a job and just what you've got to, with that, you've got to screen out the scale of it cause it would drive you crazy, but amazing to be a small part of, of the mission impossible machine.
• 1:09:56
  I really, really enjoyed it.
• 1:09:59
  And, and seeing all that up close, I suppose the scale of that kind of thing, particularly remember on the first one,
• 1:10:09
  And Chris McQuarrie had an idea about the opening because nothing was shot in order or even written.
• 1:10:19
  And on day two, Tom said something about Russian submarines.
• 1:10:23
  And by day three, they were building them.
• 1:10:26
  And he literally gave me a picture.
• 1:10:29
  But that was an idea on Monday.
• 1:10:30
  And there they were.
• 1:10:31
  Extraordinary kind of pharaonic production.
• 1:10:35
  Well, he should have come straight to you because, of course, Cold War being that situation.
• 1:10:38
  So, Tom, this is how you do a submarine.
• 1:10:40
  This is how you do a base in the siege.
• 1:10:43
  You need a Russian submarine, yeah.
• 1:10:45
  Put an ice warrior in there and you're off to the races.
• 1:10:47
  Do you remember those conversations you would have?
• 1:10:50
  Did you have many with Tom and McHugh on the set when you were making that film about the film itself?
• 1:10:55
  Yeah, also.
• 1:10:56
  I mean, I tell you, this is my favorite thing.
• 1:10:58
  I've said that so many times, but it was a delightful experience.
• 1:11:01
  Once we were through the nerves, it was joyous.
• 1:11:04
  And then you do become like, my God, it's Mission Impossible.
• 1:11:07
  This is incredible.
• 1:11:08
  Who'd have thought it?
• 1:11:09
  But the best thing was the only one I hadn't seen was Three, weirdly, with Philip Seymour Hoffman.
• 1:11:17
  And we started on the Monday.
• 1:11:19
  On the Sunday, I watched Three, which I enjoyed very much.
• 1:11:24
  And then when we were chatting the first day of filming,
• 1:11:29
  or maybe the second date, Tom Cruise said, basically, they said, this is the summation of all of them.
• 1:11:37
  Henry Sieny was back from the first one.
• 1:11:40
  It's going to have an element of all of the mission films.
• 1:11:45
  And...
• 1:11:47
  He said, there's a MacGuffin in the third one.
• 1:11:51
  And I went, the rabbit's foot.
• 1:11:52
  And he went, yeah.
• 1:11:54
  And I only knew that because I'd literally just watched the night before.
• 1:11:57
  I looked like, yeah, I know that.
• 1:11:58
  I know these films very well.
• 1:12:02
  But my God, he was such a funny man.
• 1:12:04
  And he's obviously, he's been part of our cinema lives since I was 14.
• 1:12:12
  And it's incredible to think who he's worked with.
• 1:12:15
  Paul Newman, you know, and all these astonishing directors.
• 1:12:19
  And he's the last movie star, in a way, you know.
• 1:12:24
  That's something incredible about that, really.
• 1:12:29
  My favourite from the second one was Tom, Tom.
• 1:12:34
  He turned 60 on the set.
• 1:12:37
  And we were told to assemble in the war room, you know, the Strangelove war room.
• 1:12:47
  At lunchtime, secretly, everybody came down.
• 1:12:51
  And it had the DEFCON sign, 54321, DEFCON 521.
• 1:12:56
  And there was a young lad playing a marine in it.
• 1:13:01
  And because it's showbiz, he had one line, Madam President for Angela Bassett, which was cut.
• 1:13:07
  But he was a lovely lad.
• 1:13:08
  It was his first job at drama school.
• 1:13:11
  And he was so skinny.
• 1:13:13
  It was like a thumb in a uniform.
• 1:13:16
  You know, with that redness that only young men have about 19.
• 1:13:21
  You know, sort of blush.
• 1:13:23
  He was lovely, but, like, overwhelmed by it all.
• 1:13:27
  And we all crept down at lunchtime.
• 1:13:30
  Then Tom was led from his trailer into darkness.
• 1:13:32
  Yeah.
• 1:13:33
  And then all the lights came on.
• 1:13:34
  Balloons fell.
• 1:13:36
  The DEF CON sign started flashing like a disco.
• 1:13:39
  And Angela Bassett came out of the shadows singing, happy birthday to you.
• 1:13:44
  And I looked at Peter and I said, it's not always like this, you know.
• 1:13:49
  It was the most insane showbiz day.
• 1:13:51
  It's like, well, I remember this one.
• 1:13:54
  Wow.
• 1:13:56
  Only Tom Cruise of Mission Impossible.
• 1:13:59
  Is it true that, because of course, another great British player in that series is Simon Peck.
• 1:14:04
  Is it true that Simon Peck showed Tom League of Gentlemen?
• 1:14:06
  Yeah.
• 1:14:07
  I think he said, this is some fucked up shit.
• 1:14:10
  Yeah, but he knows it.
• 1:14:12
  I mean, he knows who I am.
• 1:14:13
  That's ridiculous.
• 1:14:15
  And that's, yeah, I still can't get my head around that sort of thing.
• 1:14:20
  I mean, my favourite of the League of Gentlemen characters you play is Les Creme Brulee.
• 1:14:24
  It's a shit business.
• 1:14:25
  All that.
• 1:14:25
  You'll find out.
• 1:14:29
  I watched it in lockdown for the first time, the whole lot, me and my flatmate, the one we did the Bond films with, and all that was all we could quote for 18 months.
• 1:14:38
  It's still true.
• 1:14:39
  It's still true.
• 1:14:40
  I mean, I'm sure you've been asked this before, but do you have a favourite League of Gentlemen characters that you played?
• 1:14:44
  Yes, probably Les or Mickey, I guess.
• 1:14:47
  Yeah.
• 1:14:47
  But I love, I'm a great soft spot for Les because it's, Jeremy and I, you know, there's a lot of, all our favourite stuff is, it's real pathos, I think.
• 1:14:57
  Alan Bennett's our hero.
• 1:14:59
  And it's, it's the two things at once, hopefully very funny, but also there's a lot of truth in that.
• 1:15:05
  And, and the reality of that, of living off those memories and, you know, that drawer full of tapes and all that.
• 1:15:14
  It's very real, isn't it?
• 1:15:15
  Yeah.
• 1:15:15
  Yeah.
• 1:15:16
  But I love all the Eurovision detail and all that sort of stuff.
• 1:15:20
  Smokey.
• 1:15:25
  It's a lost world, I think, those kind of bands.
• 1:15:27
  And I'm very nostalgic for that period.
• 1:15:32
  I went through a thing a couple of years ago.
• 1:15:35
  I was on a long train journey, and I suddenly remembered how much I loved the New Seekers when I was a kid.
• 1:15:40
  Begged, steal, or borrow.
• 1:15:43
  And I just played it for hours.
• 1:15:45
  And it was properly Proustian.
• 1:15:48
  You know, it's like someone pushing a button to 1972.
• 1:15:52
  And it slightly overwhelmed me because I hadn't thought about them for years.
• 1:15:56
  We used to have those Top of the Pops albums, if I remember.
• 1:15:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:16:00
  It was amazingly powerful.
• 1:16:03
  All back to nostalgia.
• 1:16:04
  But that's what... That is...
• 1:16:08
  It's something we all wrestle with.
• 1:16:10
  But it's also...
• 1:16:11
  It's pernicious.
• 1:16:12
  And it's difficult.
• 1:16:15
  I think this country is absolutely... Britain has a terminal case of nostalgia.
• 1:16:19
  And we're trapped in this idea of the past... A golden age we never really had.
• 1:16:26
  Everything was better.
• 1:16:26
  Of course, it was everything was better when anyone was a kid.
• 1:16:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:16:30
  And we're all, but we're in danger of being ruled by people who think that's actually true.
• 1:16:35
  And people who think watching The Great Escape on Christmas Day is the same as fighting in the Second World War.
• 1:16:41
  And that's where we are.
• 1:16:43
  It's really deadly.
• 1:16:45
  Yeah, I agree.
• 1:16:46
  I agree.
• 1:16:47
  And you even talk about that with the league, you guys, when you brought it back.
• 1:16:51
  I mean, the whole idea, thesis of that series, to me, seems to be you can never go back, but you can visit.
• 1:16:55
  Visit, yeah.
• 1:16:55
  That's what they say.
• 1:16:56
  And then, of course, Les has that moment where he's up, where, I mean, spoiler alert for the league, the return.
• 1:17:01
  But, you know, he has that moment where he's kind of offered.
• 1:17:04
  He's made the offer, like, you can come back, you can play again.
• 1:17:06
  But then he doesn't take it.
• 1:17:08
  And he refuses to go down that path, and he moves into something...
• 1:17:12
  something else yeah it seems to me like yeah nostalgia cat is dangerous it's a trap but I was that was inspired I saw that amazing documentary searching for Sugar Man and I thought well this is Les isn't it what if he's big in one country and he doesn't know but it's incredible that story isn't it yeah it's a great documentary they structured the documentary so cleverly so you think he's dead and then he just goes hi oh that's pointless shit business yeah that's what he says except in South Africa yeah
• 1:17:41
  And that kind of exploration of nostalgia and kind of unpicking it and actually going, okay, what was Britain like?
• 1:17:47
  What was the past like?
• 1:17:48
  I mean, I think that's fair to say that's an apt description for bookish as well a bit, isn't it?
• 1:17:52
  Like, you know, the way that bookish, which season two is coming out very soon, the unpicking of kind of Britain's post-war psyche after the war, you know, having gone through that terrible trauma and then like you're in the dust and like, where do we go from here?
• 1:18:06
  I mean, would you say that's an apt description of what you're doing with bookish?
• 1:18:10
  Yeah, I mean, it's a period I've always been fascinated by because it's not much examined.
• 1:18:17
  There's an obsession with the war and then the 50s, but those five years, most radical government we ever had and the foundations of the NHS and...
• 1:18:28
  and a period of extraordinary kind of trauma and optimism, which then being Britain never quite worked out.
• 1:18:38
  But I just find it really interesting.
• 1:18:40
  And to shine a light on that for a book as a gay man in a love and a marriage, but also just the notion of it.
• 1:18:48
  You know, there's so many real life cases which I've read about over the years.
• 1:18:54
  People who reinvented themselves because they could, you know, they could come back and actually their street was, everyone who knew them was gone.
• 1:19:03
  And they could just say, oh, actually, I was, I had a very good war.
• 1:19:07
  And then only 25 years later when they found out or people who never recovered or people who,
• 1:19:15
  You now totally understand the time bomb that it was in terms of youth, because all those teenagers we see in 50s films who are pushing back against their lawnmower pushing colonel fathers, but because the colonels had seen quite enough.
• 1:19:33
  and they wanted normality and calm, but you can't transfer that to your own children because they've got the right to do something themselves.
• 1:19:40
  But that's what it's about.
• 1:19:42
  We've got such a sort of cliche of the Cliff Richard's dad kind of, you know, wagging a finger.
• 1:19:48
  But what it comes from is trauma and a shattered world.
• 1:19:53
  You know, I don't think we've ever really, we can't really grasp it because we weren't there.
• 1:19:58
  But even the world I grew up in as a kid,
• 1:20:02
  you know, it was, the war was everywhere.
• 1:20:05
  I once said to my dad that I'd had his childhood by proxy because everything he used to go to see in the cinema was on telly on Saturday mornings, Flash Gordon, Will Hay, Tarzan, you know, so all this war stuff, we're obsessed with the war because it's our finest hour, you know, that and the world cup is all we've got left.
• 1:20:27
  Yeah.
• 1:20:27
  And, um, uh,
• 1:20:31
  So it's really interesting, I think, to me, what that means for the future.
• 1:20:37
  And for bookish, it's an amazing playground for me because there are lots of big events that happened in those years.
• 1:20:46
  You know, the big freeze of 1947, the London Olympics.
• 1:20:51
  There's lots of, ooh, this could be something, couldn't it?
• 1:20:56
  And I'm really excited about hopefully continuing to explore that because it's book, book is a book and the show is for me is a kind of synthesis of almost everything I love murder mysteries, uh, sci-fi, uh,
• 1:21:13
  oddness, grotesquerie, a bit of the supernatural and the period.
• 1:21:18
  So it's lovely.
• 1:21:20
  I can sort of, we can almost do anything, I think, within the boundaries because it's, you can play with stuff, I think, you know.
• 1:21:29
  That's my hope.
• 1:21:30
  Yeah, well, it's such a playful show and it's so much fun to watch.
• 1:21:33
  And you're working, and in season two, you're working with such a great new cast of people like Miranda Richardson, who I've always loved, and Simon Callow, Dick Dickens himself.
• 1:21:40
  Yes.
• 1:21:40
  The name's Dickens, back from, you know, the days of the Unquiet Dead.
• 1:21:43
  And Rupert Graves, of course, from Sherlock.
• 1:21:44
  I mean, what's it been like bringing in this whole new coterie of talent to work with?
• 1:21:49
  Well, delightful.
• 1:21:50
  You know, and you...
• 1:21:54
  I'm able to use my address book, which always comes in handy for my ghost stories as well.
• 1:22:00
  But in contrast, we can actually pay them properly.
• 1:22:05
  But it was lovely.
• 1:22:07
  Miranda, I've been pursuing forever.
• 1:22:08
  And we had such a good laugh.
• 1:22:12
  She's absolutely marvellous.
• 1:22:13
  I was sort of gazing at her to an awe, really.
• 1:22:17
  Every take's different.
• 1:22:19
  And she's just, God, she's so classy.
• 1:22:22
  She does this one, there's a line where, so spoilers, I'm posing in the third story under an assumed name, which is Sebastian Melmoth.
• 1:22:34
  And she says, Sebastian Melmoth, Melmoth, it's a book, isn't it?
• 1:22:42
  I said, yes, a gothic classic.
• 1:22:44
  And she says, like me.
• 1:22:47
  And that was the line.
• 1:22:48
  And then she did it, it went, like me.
• 1:22:50
  Funny.
• 1:22:51
  We've kept it.
• 1:22:52
  It's just a life she's abused by her own joke.
• 1:22:54
  Yeah, it was wonderful.
• 1:22:57
  And Jason Watkins and Anna Corduna, Sarah Crow.
• 1:23:03
  It was really lovely.
• 1:23:04
  And it's exciting.
• 1:23:05
  And it's also welcoming a new cast for each story brings its own energy and everything.
• 1:23:13
  So, yeah, it's really good fun.
• 1:23:16
  Hard work again, but it's good work, you know.
• 1:23:18
  Yeah.
• 1:23:18
  And we were saying earlier that I think, because I know season two was commissioned, I think even before season one went out.
• 1:23:23
  Yes, which is amazing and incredibly rare.
• 1:23:26
  So it means a huge amount to me that you and Alibi did that because it's a vote of confidence.
• 1:23:33
  It also means we got on with it.
• 1:23:34
  You know, if they waited, we'd probably now be about to shoot the second season and it's actually ready to go out, you know.
• 1:23:41
  Yeah, and season three, I want to say, is in the works too.
• 1:23:44
  Christmas special, which we've just finished shooting.
• 1:23:46
  Ah, okay, yes.
• 1:23:46
  And series three, November to March of next year.
• 1:23:50
  Amazing, amazing.
• 1:23:51
  So how does it feel to be able to, I guess, yeah, you'll be given money to explore, like, this show kind of is the emphasis of everything you're interested in, to be able to have that freedom.
• 1:24:02
  I mean, it must be amazing.
• 1:24:02
  Yeah.
• 1:24:03
  Well, it's about time.
• 1:24:07
  It's delightful.
• 1:24:08
  Yeah.
• 1:24:08
  Delightful.
• 1:24:09
  And it's, uh, you know, all the usual, uh, prerequisites, uh, and caveats.
• 1:24:16
  It's a, it's challenging cause it's a lot to the physical time.
• 1:24:22
  I mean, mostly shoot in Belgium, so I'm away from home a lot, but again, back at weekends, it's a long haul and obviously, uh,
• 1:24:30
  I across everything and co-write it.
• 1:24:35
  So it's a lot, but it's delightful.
• 1:24:38
  So, you know, it's a shit business.
• 1:24:40
  I mustn't rumble.
• 1:24:42
  It's really lovely.
• 1:24:45
  I have to ask, because I know that you're a huge horror fan and have always been, and that you've presented and written on the subject, of course, History of Horror, which I think for a certain generation or more than one generation was a real big touch point for us when it came to history.
• 1:24:58
  horror films and like the history of horror like me i mean in fact the same friend who i watched league with and uh bond the imaginary friend the imaginary he was on my shoulder right he was uh we uh you know we we loved the history of horror uh documentaries that you presented and i did want to ask you as as a horror fan uh like where what are your views on modern horror like where do you what do you think the state of horror is very good today do you think it's very good yeah yeah it's um
• 1:25:27
  Horror moves around the world, I think, like a plague.
• 1:25:31
  And it's got to some very interesting places.
• 1:25:36
  I think it's great.
• 1:25:38
  There's tons of horror movies.
• 1:25:40
  They never lose money horror because it's a great date movie.
• 1:25:46
  I think that's the principal reason.
• 1:25:48
  But you can do them.
• 1:25:49
  There's some obviously invented things.
• 1:25:50
  Weapons is a hard time.
• 1:25:51
  Brilliant film.
• 1:25:52
  I mean, what a movie that is.
• 1:25:54
  It's on so many levels.
• 1:25:56
  It's weird.
• 1:25:57
  It's genuinely creepy.
• 1:26:00
  It's an incredible central performance, but it's structurally amazing.
• 1:26:03
  I was...
• 1:26:05
  when Benny Wong suddenly appears in that garage, I think it's going, what's going on?
• 1:26:09
  Like I was scared by this, the surprise of it.
• 1:26:13
  Nevermind anything else.
• 1:26:15
  When he smashes his own face in, it's like, Oh fuck, this is horrible, but brilliantly inventive.
• 1:26:22
  There's a lot of them.
• 1:26:24
  I think it's in great shape.
• 1:26:25
  So, you know, someone will make a documentary about it one day, but it just, I mean, you can, there are so many aspects.
• 1:26:32
  We're just talking about the Odyssey and you know what,
• 1:26:35
  whatever you think, the most brilliant thing is it's got loads of people to the cinema for a big film, a proper movie.
• 1:26:44
  Yeah.
• 1:26:46
  that is not, not an easy sell in some ways, but it's just wonderful that, I mean, you've, you've got to take your hat off to, to how Christopher Nolan coming in under budget as he does remarkably knows exactly what he wants.
• 1:27:01
  And the people come, it's in and of itself, it's a miracle.
• 1:27:06
  And I think we're so constantly being told about the splintering of the broadcasting environment or, or entertainment generally.
• 1:27:15
  And then,
• 1:27:17
  Something big happens and everyone goes to see it still.
• 1:27:20
  And something big happens on the telly and everyone talks about it.
• 1:27:24
  And suddenly the traitors gets 10 million viewers and everyone goes, oh, television's not dead.
• 1:27:30
  So it's thrilling.
• 1:27:32
  this has led me quite nicely into a kind of wrap-up question that we have of people on the podcast, which is their recommendations.
• 1:27:36
  So things they might've watched recently that they've really enjoyed or albums that they've listened to or books.
• 1:27:41
  I mean, you've just reeled off some good films there that you've been checking out and weapons, of course, but are there any, is there anything else that you'd recommend our viewers or listeners?
• 1:27:48
  Anything that you've read?
• 1:27:49
  You just started Widow's Bay.
• 1:27:51
  Someone else was talking about Widow's Bay.
• 1:27:52
  Who was it, George?
• 1:27:56
  We had Ferdinand Kingsley on from Empress of Mars.
• 1:27:59
  He came on recently.
• 1:27:59
  He was saying Widow's Bay was great.
• 1:28:01
  Have you seen it?
• 1:28:02
  I've only seen Snippets.
• 1:28:02
  You'll enjoy it.
• 1:28:04
  So Widow's Bay is...
• 1:28:05
  Enjoying that.
• 1:28:06
  The studio.
• 1:28:07
  Seth Rogen.
• 1:28:09
  Really enjoy that.
• 1:28:12
  Now, this is a long story My partner and I have a long-standing tradition Of when we're on holiday We only watch rotten British sitcoms It's a strange thing We just fell into it And now it's a holiday thing So we're always trying to find them This year we went to Croatia And watched John Inman in Odd Man Out 1970s
• 1:28:40
  which he made between series on I being served.
• 1:28:43
  It's very important series to me because it's the thing that Jeremy Dyson and I bonded over trying to remember the title of when we first met on New Year's Eve 1987.
• 1:28:53
  And there was no internet then.
• 1:28:55
  We couldn't look it up.
• 1:28:56
  And we spent months trying to find out.
• 1:28:58
  It's rubbish.
• 1:28:59
  It's rubbish.
• 1:29:00
  There are new things as well I've watched.
• 1:29:03
  Totally addicted to the traitors in all its forms.
• 1:29:06
  Have you seen the Australian ones?
• 1:29:08
  I have not seen the Australian ones.
• 1:29:09
  The two Australian ones are the best ones.
• 1:29:11
  They are complicated because the host is hateful.
• 1:29:18
  They are Australian and therefore their version of an old castle is from about 1983.
• 1:29:26
  But dramaturgically...
• 1:29:29
  The story in each of them is absolutely amazing.
• 1:29:33
  The twists and the betrayal will make you feel sick.
• 1:29:37
  Brilliant.
• 1:29:38
  The Irish one we've just finished is absolutely remarkable.
• 1:29:42
  I'd urge you to watch that.
• 1:29:44
  We've even started Traitors India because the American one, which we thought was all available, turned out not to be.
• 1:29:53
  We were bereft.
• 1:29:54
  We watched two in an evening and then suddenly realised we had nowhere to go.
• 1:29:57
  That's a long story.
• 1:29:59
  One else, one else, one else Jesus Christ Superstar One of my favourite musicals Currently triumphant in the Palladium again I would urge you to see that Please remind me of some things that have happened since 1950 We've touched on The Odyssey Backroom's Obsession TV, what else?
• 1:30:19
  Albums?
• 1:30:20
  Do you listen to any music?
• 1:30:21
  No, it's too late for that It's too late, I'm long gone Max Richter is about as far as I go
• 1:30:27
  Well, actually, you're on Edgar Wright's Sparks documentary.
• 1:30:31
  Yes.
• 1:30:32
  One line.
• 1:30:34
  I'm the one who says he looks like Hitler.
• 1:30:35
  I said to Edgar, I love them.
• 1:30:37
  I had dinner with them, which was thrilling.
• 1:30:39
  But I said, I can't pretend I know a lot about them.
• 1:30:41
  He said, I'll come and do it.
• 1:30:42
  So I did it.
• 1:30:43
  And then all that was salvageable was me saying, let this man have played on top of the box who looked like Hitler.
• 1:30:51
  Well, hey, I mean, it's like, I mean, as far as iconic descriptions of the band, it can't really be bad.
• 1:30:55
  That's apparently what John Lennon said.
• 1:30:57
  He rang up Paul McCartney.
• 1:30:59
  Ringo said, yeah, it's extraordinary.
• 1:31:01
  He said, like, you know, Mark Boland's playing a song about Adolf Hitler.
• 1:31:04
  That's the same.
• 1:31:05
  Is it Hitler?
• 1:31:06
  Yeah.
• 1:31:08
  Amazing.
• 1:31:08
  So, hey, Australian Traitors, Widows Bay Studio.
• 1:31:12
  And, hey, I mean, you've given us a lot there to chew on.
• 1:31:15
  A lot of food for thought.
• 1:31:17
  Brilliant.
• 1:31:17
  Well, hey, this was such a pleasure, Mark.
• 1:31:19
  Thank you so much for coming up with the picture.
• 1:31:22
  And you're a fabulous raconteur, just regaling us with all these stories.
• 1:31:25
  It's been amazing.
• 1:31:26
  So thank you so much.
• 1:31:27
  Thank you.