Mark Gatiss

Actor/Writer/Producer/Director

photo by BERTIE WATSON

Mark Gatiss has had a long and varied career as a writer, director 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.  

He had a childhood passion for Doctor Who and both wrote for and starred in the modern revival.  He was also the writer and executive producer of An Adventure in Space and Time, a drama of the genesis of the series as part of the show’s 50th Anniversary celebrations in 2013. 

Mark 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 Crooked House (2008), his adaptation of HG Well’s The First Men in the Moon (2010), Dracula (2019), The Amazing Mr Blunden (2021) and all three episodes of the documentary series A History of Horror and its one-off sequel Horror Europa, all of which he presented as well.  Additionally, he has written and directed several Christmas ghost stories for the BBC in recent years.

Mark has also created brand new detective series Bookish in which he also stars. The 6-part series will air Summer 2025.

Recent screen roles include Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, as Larry Grayson in ITV’s Nolly (2023), The Favourite (2018), Disney’s Christopher Robin (2018), Gunpowder (2017), Wolf Hall (2015) and Game of Thrones (2014-2017). He also starred opposite Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman in the Oscar-winning screen adaptation of Florian Zeller’s The Father.

On stage, he recently starred as Sir John Gielgud in The Motive and the Cue (written by Jack Thorne and directed by Sam Mendes) for which he won Best Actor at the 2024 Olivier Awards. He has also 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.

As a stage director he recently helmed The Unfriend - a new play by Steven Moffat and The Way Old Friends Do written by Ian Hallard.

Anjli Mohindra

Actor/Writer

Photo by DAVID REISS

Anjli Mohindra grew up in Nottingham and trained at The Television Workshop – an East Midlands-based training centre for young acting talent.
  
Her first major TV role was as Rani Chandra in CBBC’s The Sarah Jane Adventures – a part she played for four series between 2008-2011.
 
She has since had roles in many television dramas including Cucumber (Channel 4), written by Russell T Davies, The Boy with The Topknot (BBC Two), The Dead Room (BBC Four) opposite Simon Callow and Wild Bill (ITV) alongside Hollywood star Rob Lowe.
 
She starred as Nadia in the BAFTA-winning BBC/Netflix thriller Bodyguard, a controversial role for which she received critical acclaim and in 2021 starred in Vigil - the BBC’s biggest new drama of the year - alongside Suranne Jones.

She recently featured in Netflix film Munich: The Edge of War with Jeremy Irons and George MacKay and starred in The Lazarus Project - a thriller for Sky alongside Paapa Essiedu as well as The Suspect for ITV with Aidan Turner.

Most recently she led folk horror series The Red King (Alibi) and starred alongside Romola Garai, Deborah Findlay and Gina McKee in the critically-acclaimed play The Years at the Almeida.

Anjli recently secured a development deal with Urban Myth Films to create a TV series based on the life Princess Sophia Duleep Singh - the daughter of the last Maharajah of Punjab and a goddaughter of Queen Victoria.
 
Anjli lives in London.
 

“Full credit in particular to Anjli Mohindra, who played Nadia and who managed to say so much with her eyes throughout the series. From the terrified naivety she presented at the start, to the calculated zealotry she revealed at the end. ”

— The Guardian

“Anjli Mohindra deserves special recognition for that amazing transformation, a reverse superhero, and for a fabulously evil future ahead of her in Bodyguard – cast against type, as the best villains sometimes are”

— The Independent

Rakie Ayola

Actor

PHOTO CREDIT: EJATU SHAW

Rakie Ayola is a BAFTA-winning Welsh actor known for her work across theatre, TV and film. Her mother was from Sierra Leone and her father was Nigerian.  She was the recipient of the BAFTA Cymru Sian Phillips Award in 2023 and has also won the BAFTA Cymru award for Best Actress (2023 for The Pact) and the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress (2021) for her role in Jimmy McGovern’s Anthony. Additional television credits include Grace, Shetland, Black Mirror and Noughts and Crosses.

In 2017 Rakie took over the role of Hermione Granger in the West End Production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The same year she founded her own production company - Shanty Productions. She is a trustee of ACT, a charity that supports actors’ children. She is also a patron of the Childhood Tumour Trust and affiliated to various charitable organisations in the arts. 

In Summer 2024 she featured as Persephone in Charlie Covell’s Netflix series Kaos starring Jeff Goldblum and Janet McTeer. 

Maya Sondhi

Actor/Writer

Maya Sondhi was born and raised in Birmingham.  She attended the National Youth Theatre and after completing her A-levels studied a Diploma in Acting at LAMDA. 

 As an actor she has featured in Line of Duty (Series 3, 4 and 5) as key character PC Maneet Bindra, The Split (BBC), The Following Events are Based on a Pack of Lies (BBC) and has been a regular voice on the kids animated series Paddington (Nick. Jr) Dennis and Gnasher Unleashed (CBBC) and Milo (Channel 5). 

After starring in Line of Duty she was encouraged by the show’s creator Jed Mercurio to write her own TV series and subsequently became the creator, showrunner and executive producer of ITV Drama DI Ray starring Parminder Nagra.  She has also been part of the writers’ room for This is Going to Hurt starring Ben Whishaw (BBC) and has written episodes of Eastenders and Ackley Bridge.  DI Ray Season 2 is due to air on ITV in Autumn 2024.  

Maya lives with her partner and two children in South London.

Ambreen Razia

Actor/Writer

Ambreen is an actor and writer from South London. Her critically acclaimed play The Diary of a Hounslow Girl toured nationally around the UK in 2016 and was adapted as a BBC Three pilot. She has since had roles across film and television including Murdered By My Father (BBC), Hounslow Diaries (BBC), Black Mirror (Netflix), This Way Up (Channel 4), Starstruck (BBC), and Scrapper (BFI/Film 4) which won the World Grand Jury prize at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

She recently played Shandy Fine in the latest series of Ted Lasso (Apple TV), Shivani in Starstruck (BBC) and Detective Thread in Channel 4’s The Curse. Her latest role is as Blair in Paramount+ series The Agency starring Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere. She will be returning in Season 2 which will launch late 2025 as a series regular. She will also be starring in In Flight - a new drama for Channel 4 launching end of 2025

Her play Pot was published by Oberon books and completed its national tour around the UK in 2018. Her subsequent play Favour finished its run at the Bush Theatre in 2022 receiving critical acclaim. She has also recently been part of the writers’ rooms for the award-winning We Are Lady Parts (Channel 4) and Extraordinary (Disney+). It was recently announced that Ambreen is developing a new comedy drama Wasted (working title) about alcoholism and post partum depression in Muslim communities.

Ambreen co-edited and starred in season one of the BBC Radio 4 chat show Gossip and Goddesses alongside Meera Syal. Her short film Dues centring around exploitation within county lines recently screened at the Chicago International Children’s Festival and the British Urban Film Festival. 

Ambreen was part of the BBC Talent Hotlist as well as being a member of the Royal Court Writers Group. Awards include Best Newcomer (Asian Media Awards), Eastern Eye’s Emerging Artist award and Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Television Awards.

Ian Hallard

Actor

Photo Credit: Michael shelford

Ian was born in Birmingham, and studied English Literature at Sheffield University before his drama training at Mountview Theatre School.

In 2016, Ian played the lead role of Michael in an acclaimed revival of the classic American play ‘The Boys in the Band’, directed by Adam Penford and also starring Mark Gatiss, Jack Derges, James Holmes and Daniel Boys. The show opened at the Park Theatre in London before embarking on a tour of the UK. In February, 2017 he reprised the role when the show transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End. He was subsequently nominated for Best Actor in a Play at the Whatsonstage awards, alongside Kenneth Branagh, Ian McKellen, Ralph Fiennes and Jamie Parker.

His other theatre work includes playing Alan Turing in the Hope Theatre’s Lovesong of the Electric Bear and in its subsequent transfer to the Arts Theatre, The Vote at the Donmar Warehouse and Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest at Jermyn Street Theatre.

He has performed at the National Theatre in Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution and in Richard Bean’s riotous satire about the tabloid press Great Britain, directed by Nicholas Hytner, alongside Billie Piper and Robert Glenister.

Other stage work encompasses Shakespeare, musical theatre, opera, operetta and pantomime. 

Ian’s television roles include Alan-a-Dale in the Doctor Who episode ‘Robot of Sherwood’, and Moriarty’s barrister, Mr Crayhill, in Sherlock. Other TV appearances include The Crown, Poirot, An Adventure in Space and Time and Hustle.

As a writer, he has also been a script associate on two episodes of ITV’s Poirot and co-wrote a third: The Big Four with Mark Gatiss.

For stage he has written Horse-Play which played at Riverside Studios in Autumn 2022 and will be starring in his latest work The Way Old Friends Do which will open at the Birmingham Rep in Spring 2023.

He lives in Islington with his partner and labrador.

“Ian Hallard as Michael makes what could easily be a self-hating, lapsed Catholic archetype into someone you recognise as real”

— The Independent (The Boys in the Band)

“Standouts are Hallard, who expertly suggests Michael’s self-loathing”

— The Evening Standard (The Boys in the Band)

Ingrid Oliver

Actor/Writer/Director

Born in Germany, Ingrid Oliver spent her early childhood in Kuwait before attending Tiffin Girls’ School in Kingston and then reading Modern Languages at New College, Oxford. On completion of her degree she trained at Arts Educational Schools, London. 

Following sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006 and 2007 she and her comedy partner Lorna Watson were commissioned for their own television sketch show (Watson & Oliver) on BBC Two in 2012 which ran for two series.  

In 2013 she was cast as scientist Petronella Osgood in the 50th Anniversary special of Doctor Who – a role which she reprised in subsequent series starring alongside Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman.  

Ingrid returned to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017 with a new solo show entitled Speech! which explored the spectrum of political opinion through various character sketches in the wake of Brexit referendum. 

In 2019 she starred alongside Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson in The Hustle - a female-led remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels directed by Chris Addison and alongside Emilia Clarke and Emma Thompson in Last Christmas, a romantic comedy directed by Paul Feig. She recently featured in BBC America/BBC Two series The Watch.

Ingrid wrote and directed her first short filmed entitled The Story of Ken which was selected for the Aesthetica Film Festival 2018, The London Lift Off Festival and Film Bath.

Additional TV credits include Peep Show (Channel 4), Lead Balloon (BBC Two), Twenty Twelve (BBC Two), The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret (IFC/More4) and Plebs (ITV).  She has also been a regular on many BBC Radio 4 comedies including Recording for Training Purposes, The Castle and Elvenquest. Her film credits include You, Me and Him (2018), 96 Ways to Say I Love You (2015) and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008). 

“She’s a fine performer”

— The Scotsman

“Double act Ingrid Oliver and Lorna Watson don’t disappoint in this hugely enjoyable new sketch show”

— The Telegraph

“Ingrid Oliver can really act”

— The Independent