Mark Gatiss on Doctor Who, Bookish and Sherlock: The Radio Times Writers' Room

For this first edition, we spoke with Mark Gatiss, who first appeared on our screens as part of The League of Gentlemen - the creators of a BBC comedy horror show of the same name, which also included Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson.

Since then, he has become known for his work on Doctor Who, both behind the camera and in front of it, as well as for co-creating Sherlock, the modern take on Arthur Conan Doyle's creation in which he played Mycroft.

Throughout our chat, we also touched on his work on An Adventure in Space and Time, a drama about the creation of Doctor Who; Dracula, his and Steven Moffat's version of the classic Bram Stoker story; and Bookish, his newest creation.

In Bookish, Gatiss plays Gabriel Book, the owner of an antiquarian book shop in 1946, who spends his time helping the police solve a variety of mysterious crimes.

It's a real passion project for Gatiss - one which his love of Doctor Who and his obsession with the crime genre have had substantial influence on.

As well as sharing anecdotes and learnings from his career thus far, Gatiss also spoke about what drew him to writing as a career in the first place and which project has been the most personal for him to craft.

He also delved into why 15 years is NOT an anniversary, revealed the genre he finds the most challenging to write in and spoke about why "weaponised nostalgia" is such a threat.

"The actual process of trying to make it a modern show for a new audience is not about nostalgia, and I think that's the great difference," Gatiss said of his work on Doctor Who.

"You have to go, ‘Right, why is this going to work now? It doesn't really matter what worked for Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, it’s about now. So if we're trying to get an audience now, this show is the same, but different.’ So, to me, it was always a combination of those things.

"And it's a strange thing, because I've revived so many things, but I think nostalgia is a great enemy, and we have to all be careful of it.

"It's part of the reason we're in the mess we are, I think - weaponised nostalgia. ‘Nothing's as good as it used to be,’ and yet people can't see that people have always thought that, even when it used to be better. It's a dangerous thing."

You can watch the full video at the top of this article right now, and look out for more trips to The Radio Times Writers' Room soon.

Next time, we will be chatting with Harry and Jack Williams, the writers behind The Missing, Liar, The Tourist, Boat Story and the executive producers of Fleabag. They will be talking to us all about their new Prime Video series The Assassin - don't miss it!

Bookish will air on U&Alibi on Wednesday 16th July at 8pm.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.