Sherlock star Mark Gatiss has said he would not appear on Taskmaster, explaining that he wants to preserve the impression that he is intelligent.
The actor, who played Mycroft Holmes in the BBC series Sherlock, responded to a fan during a Reddit AMA on Friday, where he was promoting season two of his show Bookish. In the series, Gatiss plays Gabriel Book, a bookshop owner who solves crimes.
Gatiss explains his refusal
A Reddit user asked whether Gatiss preferred a good ghost story or a good mystery, and also suggested he would be brilliant on Taskmaster. He replied: 'Both!' to the first question, then added: 'Taskmaster is one of my favourite shows – but like David Mitchell I would like to preserve the general impression that I’m intelligent and have no wish to disabuse people of that notion.'
Gatiss's reasoning echoes that of comedian David Mitchell, who previously said he had been asked to do Taskmaster but turned it down. Mitchell told Beyond the Joke: 'It’s a very good show but I don’t want to be on it. My feeling is that I’d be s**t but not in a funny way. People think maybe I’d be a good sport about it and I don’t think people thinking that will increase if I’m on it. It’s like I’ve been asked to be on Celebrity Mastermind because people think I’d be quite good at that. So why would I do it then? All I can do is ruin it by going on it and turning out to be considerably more ignorant than people expect.'
Sherlock versus Bookish
During the same AMA, Gatiss also discussed the differences between writing crimes for Sherlock and for Gabriel Book. He said: 'With Sherlock – we always went back to Conan Doyle and you’re writing for an existing character. Bookish is period specific so a lot of the inspiration for the mystery of the week comes from the setting. If they share anything it’s that I didn’t want Book to be omniscient. Just as in our version of Sherlock he has big gaps in his knowledge, Book relies on other people’s expertise at times and obviously the books which surround him. But like Holmes he is able to make big intuitive leaps.'
Bookish season 2 premieres on Wednesday August 26, 2026, at 8pm on U&Alibi.
