5 July 2017
In this week's episode of UKTV crime podcast, A Stab In The Dark, host Mark Billingham talks to Sherlock's Mark Gatiss. In a wide-ranging discussion about his work and career, Mark reveals the contents of his younger self's dressing up and who has been his favourite character to play, and how a prop from Doctor Who has turned into one of his most prized possessions.
He also discusses his love of horror, Agatha Christie and RuPaul's Drag Race; as well as reveal how he and Steven Moffat came up with the idea for a modern Sherlock, how, because of the success of Wallander, Sherlock became three, ninety-minute episodes rather than six hour-long episodes, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman's instant chemistry, and, of course, the show's future.
Plus, our man with the spyglass, Paul Hirons, talks to Murdoch Mysteries' Hélène Joy.
Teaser clip
Teaser clip
Guest recommendations
Mark recommendations are quite left-field, and he quotes some old, rare crime books. He was quite taken with the titles: They Rang Up The Police (Joanna Canna, 1939), He Should Not Have Slipped (unknown) and Death In Hospital (unknown). "There's one about a vegetable marrow." It's called Vegetable Duck (John Rhode, 1944).
As for TV, it's RuPaul's Drag Race all the way for Mark ("it does have a murderous element"), but also old-time crime radio plays, from the 1940s. He's listened to the CBS drama, Sorry Wrong Number, with Agnes Moorehead and Orson Wells, and the ABC murder dramas with Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester.