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" If you hadn&amp;#039;t noticed, there&amp;#039;s a little award ceremony this weekend - the Philips British Academy Television Awards! Yes, it&amp;#039;s time for TV types across the land to wait and see if they&amp;#039;ll get to take home one of the famous BAFTA gongs. Mark Gatiss will be crossing his fingers that Sherlock and Doctor Who get honoured, as he&amp;#039;s written for both of them recently. When we spotted him at the BAFTA nominees party, we grabbed him for a quick chat, so read on to find out what he had to say... How are you feeling that Sherlock has been nominated for &amp;#039;Best Drama Series&amp;#039;? &amp;quot;Thrilled, delighted. It&amp;#039;s been far too long since The League of Gentlemen won, so yes, it&amp;#039;s very nice, thank you!&amp;quot; What do you think its chances are? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a very strong field. Misfits is one of my favourite shows, I think it&amp;#039;s a fantastic show. They&amp;#039;re all very strong.&amp;quot; Who will you be rooting for with &amp;#039;Best Actor&amp;#039;? Obviously, Benedict Cumberbatch worked on Sherlock but you have links to Doctor Who and Matt Smith too... &amp;quot;I write Sherlock with Steve [Moffat], Steve also obviously writes Doctor Who, which I also write for... I&amp;#039;m definitely rooting for Benedict and Matt, so I&amp;#039;ve got half of [the nominees] sewn up! It&amp;#039;s a very strong field. As I say, it&amp;#039;s fantastic that Matt&amp;#039;s been nominated - the first Doctor to be nominated for a BAFTA. There should have been many others nominated for a BAFTA, but there we go! But that&amp;#039;s fantastic, I&amp;#039;m thrilled. I&amp;#039;m massively thrilled that Martin [Freeman]&amp;#039;s been nominated [for &amp;#039;Best Supporting Actor&amp;#039;], been recognised for playing John Watson. Often in a way even though it&amp;#039;s definitely a two person lead, Sherlock, historically Watson is slightly overlooked so I&amp;#039;m very thrilled about that. And obviously for the show itself to be nominated is wonderful... We&amp;#039;ve got to win them now, but it&amp;#039;s still lovely to be nominated!&amp;quot; Will you be nervous on BAFTA night? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve not been drinking for a while, just for fun, so it depends how much I put back! You&amp;#039;ve just got to be very grown up about it all. It&amp;#039;s great to be nominated and it&amp;#039;s lovely to be recognised like that and it&amp;#039;s wonderful to win - I know it is, I&amp;#039;m not going to pretend it isn&amp;#039;t - but at the same time the shows I think speak for themselves and that goes across the board, really. It&amp;#039;s wonderful to be amongst these nominations and to recognise that quality.&amp;quot; Sherlock&amp;#039;s coming back soon - is there anything you can tell us? &amp;quot;I can only say what we&amp;#039;ve already said. It&amp;#039;s an interesting thing, this. It was announced last August at the Edinburgh television festival and I wrote this very, very cryptic press release. I thought, &amp;#039;We mustn&amp;#039;t give too much away&amp;#039;. I was like, &amp;#039;Sherlock will be back, he may fall, he may meet new foes, either four-legged or two&amp;#039;. I thought, &amp;#039;This is cryptic enough&amp;#039;. And no-one seemed to get it! So we started saying, &amp;#039;Adler, Hound, Reichenbach&amp;#039;. Anyone who seems to know anything about Sherlock Holmes would know what that means, but it still doesn&amp;#039;t seem to get through! So all I&amp;#039;m going to say is, &amp;#039;Adler, Hound, Reichenbach&amp;#039;.&amp;quot; I suppose you don&amp;#039;t have to worry about spoilers, then... &amp;quot;All you have to do is Google! It&amp;#039;s easy! I&amp;#039;m not going to say any more.&amp;quot; It must be difficult for you to stop yourself from saying too much. &amp;quot;No!&amp;quot; Not even with Doctor Who? &amp;quot;No. I&amp;#039;m a great believer in the beauty and the power of surprise. For instance, the David Tennant story from a couple of years ago called &amp;#039;Gridlock&amp;#039; - a wonderful story that Russell T Davies wrote - set in a future planet in a sort of space traffic jam, all these things and this fog. And at the end the creatures that are sort of feasting off people are giant crabs. Now they&amp;#039;re just giant crabs, but just because he could, Russell made them the Macra, who featured in a 1967 Patrick Troughton story. When David looks through the fog and sees them and says, &amp;#039;Macra&amp;#039;, my hair stood on end! You see, that&amp;#039;s the power of surprise. I know myself, as a viewer, I don&amp;#039;t want to know these things. As much as you think you do, the moment after you&amp;#039;ve been told you&amp;#039;re crushingly disappointed because it&amp;#039;s never a surprise. Now look, Doctor Who episode two [this series] - the last shot of the little girl, whoever she is, regenerating... God! Brilliant! What does it mean?&amp;quot; People love Doctor Who so much - do you ever feel under pressure when you&amp;#039;re writing episodes? &amp;quot;All you can do, I think, is try and write what you want to write and as enjoyably as you can. I always say, if you start trying to do some sort of checklist, you&amp;#039;re absolutely lost. In fact, Doctor Who is a good example in that really the very, very dyed-in-the-blood fans - they want to know how Paul McGann became Christopher Eccleston and they want to know the detail. If you actually start writing for that you&amp;#039;re lost, because you&amp;#039;ll lose your general audience. You&amp;#039;ve got to make sure that when you tune in, you can get it. Now obviously there are currents and story arcs and things which are ongoing but at its most basic level you want to scare people and have a good time, and that&amp;#039;s what it&amp;#039;s about.&amp;quot; At the start of the current series of Doctor Who, some people were saying it&amp;#039;s too scary. What do you make of that? &amp;quot;Thrilling, wonderful! Of course it is [a good thing if it&amp;#039;s scary]. It&amp;#039;s also wonderful that it&amp;#039;s being talked about so much. But of course it should be too scary. When I wrote my very first one for Chris Eccleston I actually went on [Radio 4 show] PM with Eddie Mair because they&amp;#039;d had people saying, &amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s too frightening&amp;#039;. He said, &amp;#039;How do you feel?&amp;#039; and I said, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m absolutely over the moon&amp;#039;. Of course that&amp;#039;s what it&amp;#039;s about. It&amp;#039;s what it was about when I was a kid, it&amp;#039;s what it should always be about. It&amp;#039;s a healthy scare and there&amp;#039;s nothing like that. It&amp;#039;s as good as a healthy laugh.&amp;quot; The Philips British Academy Television Awards will be held in London on Sunday. The ceremony will be broadcast on BBC One from 8pm. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/doctor-who/interviews/a320452/tube-talk-qa-mark-gatiss/>