Doctor Who spin-off Class is in session.
As of today, you can watch the first two episodes of the show online on BBC Three. How modern, right?
You know what else is modern? Diversity. In television and in life.
Digital Spy and other press sat down with head writer Patrick Ness to talk about the D, and this is what he said.
"When I was a kid, I never saw myself in books. I never saw myself on-screen. I never dreamed that the lead of a show would be somebody like me. And the lack of that is harmful.
"I don't do it for... 'tick box' reasons, I do it because that's the story I desperately want to tell, and I'm really passionate about. So of course it feels natural for me to write it.
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"[A lack of diversity] harms people. It really does. When you don't see yourself on screen, you are harmed. You are implicitly disinvited from the party and I just thought, when I started writing books, that that was never going to happen again - not on my watch.
"And also one of my fundamental beliefs is that one of the ways to change the world is to act as if the world has already changed."
"Nobody under 20 is going to blink at [the show's gay couple] Charlie and Matteusz," he continued, "and the people over 20, they'll come along. It's important to me, but it's also important to me that it be part of the story.
"It was interesting - when we went to New York Comic Con, we did panels with Dirk Gently and with Doctor Who and those three shows have more black actresses than the entire series run of Modern Family. It's true, and stunning.
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"I do start with [diversity] - not that it's necessarily the most important thing about the character, but my thing about this question is... it has to start with the story first, but that sentence is often used as an excuse to only write about white people.
"But I believe if you are purporting to tell a true story, or a story that reflects the world, and the world doesn't look like the world around you, then you're lying.
"This show is set in Shoreditch, in London, so if you're not even slightly looking around and reflecting what people look like five feet from you, then how can you purport to be telling any kind of truth?
"Plus, for a writer, it's a joy: fresh eyes, fresh stories, fresh characters, fresh ways of seeing the world. So it's a joyous storytelling thing - it's not in any way some kind of PC limitation. It's like, open your eyes - the world is a rich, vibrant, interesting place. London, especially."
The first two episodes of Class are available to watch now on BBC Three.
Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
