Comedy names among the line-up

Rebecca Front, Russell Tovey and Gemma Wheelan are to appear in the BBC’s new series of monologues about homosexuality.

In Queers, eight writers respond to the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act which partially decriminalised homosexual acts between men.

The season has been curated by the League Of Gentleman and Sherlock’s Mark Gatiss, who also directs.

Ben Whishaw, Alan Cumming, Ian Gelder, Kadiff Kirwan and Fionn Whitehead  complete the cast.

In The Man On The Platform, Whishaw (London Spy) returns from the trenches of the First World War, whilst a hundred years later, Cumming (The Good Wife) reflects on gay marriage in Something Borrowed.

More Anger finds Tovey (Him And Her) playing a gay actor in the 1980s, and ront (The Thick Of It) contemplates her very particular marriage in Missing Alice.

Whelan (Game Of Thrones), Kirwan (Chewing Gum), Ian Gelder (Snatch) and Fionn Whitehead (Dunkirk) appear respectively in A Perfect Gentleman, Safest Spot In Town, I Miss The War and A Grand Day Out, each examining different attitudes and social changes in gay men's lives over the century.

The plays are written by Matthew Baldwin, Jon Bradfield, Michael Dennis, Keith Jarrett, and Gareth McLean, who are writing for television for the first time, alongside established screenwriters Jackie Clune, Brian Fillis and Gatiss himself.

Queers is being produced with The Old Vic Theatre which will stage all eight of the monologues in July, in the run up to the television transmission.

Published: 11 May 2017