Skip to main content

Home Culture Culture Film & TV

Gay ‘Holby City’ star responds to ‘too many gay characters’ criticism

By Ross Semple

Gay Holby City actor David Ames has slammed complaints that the show has ‘too many’ LGBT+ characters.

Last week, the BBC came to the defence of the medical drama after viewers complained about the amount of LGBT+ characters. The show has increased its LGBT+ representation in recent years, with gay characters played by Ames and Lee Mead joining the cast.

In an interview with the Daily Star, the BBC’s head of continuing drama, Oliver Kent, said: “I am involved in Holby City and we had complaints recently because it was deemed by some viewers that we had too many gay characters.

“And that’s because at the time we had two gay love stories. We had four characters out of 17. I don’t think that’s disproportionate.”

After the complaints caused a firestorm on social media, Attitude got in touch with David, who plays Dominic ‘Dom’ Copeland on the series, to ask him what he thought of the controversy.

“‘Holby has too many gay characters.’ Take out the word gay and replace it with any other minority group and see how that sentence sounds,” David said.

Holby doesn’t have too many gay characters. It has a well balanced, proportionate representation of society. This is nothing but bigotry.”

We couldn’t agree more.

More stories:
Meet the gay extreme athlete who overcame drug addiction to row solo across the Atlantic
PrEP campaigner Greg Owen opens up about his journey with the HIV prevention drug