Mark Gatiss has had a long and varied career as a writer and producer behind the camera, as well as being a critically acclaimed actor and published author.

His early success on television was as part of the comedy troupe The League of Gentlemen, for which he both wrote and appeared onscreen as various characters. In 2017, the show returned to BBC Two for three specials. 

He had a childhood passion for Doctor Who and has written  for the modern revival since 2005. He was also the writer and executive producer of An Adventure in Space and Time, a 90-minute dramatisation of the genesis of the series as part of the show’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2013. He also appeared alongside Peter Capaldi as The Captain in the 2017 Doctor Who Christmas Special Twice Upon a Time.

Gatiss is the co-creator and executive producer of Sherlock, the hit BBC series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, which has seen unprecedented global success and in which he also plays Sherlock’s brother Mycroft Holmes. The show has won a total of nine Emmys and twelve BAFTAs across its four series.  

Mark’s other writing credits for television include episodes of Nighty Night (2004–2005), the ghost story miniseries Crooked House (2008) which he also executive produced, two episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, his adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon (2010) and all three episodes of the documentary series A History of Horror (2010) and its one-off sequel Horror Europa (2012), all of which he presented as well.  

In 2017, he curated and directed Queers – a series of eight monologues for BBC Four to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act which saw the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality.

Recent acting roles include Stephen Gardiner in the BBC’s Wolf Hall (2015), Peter Mandelson in James Graham’s Coalition (2015) for Channel Four, Tycho Nestoris in HBO’s Game of Thrones (2014–2017) and Robert Cecil in BBC One’s Gunpowder (2017). On stage, he has starred alongside Tom Hiddleston in Coriolanus (2013), as Harold in Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (2016) and as Doctor Shpigelsky in Patrick Marber’s adaptation of Turgenev’s Three Days in the Country for which he received the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.  

In November 2018 he will be taking on the lead role in The Madness of George III at the Nottingham Playhouse which will be screened by NT Live in over 2,500 screens across the world. In 2018 he will also be appearing in feature films The Favourite from director Yorgos Lanthimos alongside Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman and in Disney’s live action Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor and Hayley Atwell. 

In August 2018 he wrote and presented the documentary Mark Gatiss on John Minton: The Lost Man of British Art for BBC Four.

He is currently writing Dracula for the BBC with his Sherlock co-creator Steven Moffat which will go into production in 2019.

Mark Gatiss. Photo credit: BBC.
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