"So I’d like to thank Paul Lee, Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers, Bill D’Elia and Peter Nowalk for thinking that a sexualized, messy, mysterious woman could be a 49 year old dark skinned African American woman who looks like me."

Those were the powerful words of Viola Davis having picked up the SAG Award for Female Actor in Drama Series a couple weeks ago and they reminded everyone what a great place TV is in right now. Ever since entering its Golden Age a few years ago, more and more roles have been cropping up for every type of actor, steadily making TV the diverse place it should be. Yet Viola Davis’ words also reminded us about something else: the stunning lack of diversity in the film industry.

I’m more than proud to say that I’m a film fan. After a stressful week, there’s nothing I love more than sitting down in a dark room with a bunch of strangers and losing myself in someone else’s story for two hours. Yet mention the diversity, well lack thereof, in film and I’ll shrivel up into a ball of embarrassment. And frankly it is embarrassing, and it’s becoming more so.

I think it’s quite ironic that television is currently showing the film industry up. Seen in the past as film’s slightly incompetent and less important younger brother, TV is now stealing films stars, writers and directors from under the film industry’s nose and it’s not hard to see why: TV is currently proving that the Film industry has absolutely no excuses on the diversity front.

Just look at the recent award ceremonies. At the Golden Globes, out of the ten nominees for Best TV Series, both Drama and Comedy or Musical, four of them have female protagonists (The Good Wife, Girls, Orange is the New Black and Jane the Virgin), four are even handers or ensemble pieces (House of Cards, The Affair, Downton and Game of Thrones), and one, Transparent, the winner for best TV Series – Musical or Comedy, centres on a transgender protagonist. With regards to race, again at the Golden Globes Gina Rodriguez won Best Actress – Muscial or Comedy for her portrayal as a 23-year-old religious young Latina woman who becomes pregnant after being artificially inseminated by mistake in Jane the Virgin, and at the recent SAG awards, along with Viola Davis’ win, Uzo Aduba became the first black woman to win the Best Female Actor in a Comedy Series trophy.

It’s not just at awards shows that diversity is winning. Just look at the recent US Television ratings and you can see shows such as Elementary, How to Get Away with Murder, Scandal and The Good raking in nearly ten million viewers every week without fail. Four shows, four female protagonists, two of them black, one of them Asian, all of them over 35. I’m not saying TV is perfect, it still has a long way to go; but it’s definitely getting there.

So if TV is showing us that audiences are interested in stories about a wide variety of characters, regardless of gender or race, why isn’t this seen in film? Some argue that the film industry is a different beast and things that work in television don’t necessarily transfer. Yet if you look from recent big budget successes such as Gone Girl and The Hunger Games, to smaller indies like Dear White People and Wild it’s clear to see that this just isn’t true.

The idea that people will only go and see a film with black or female characters so long as it’s ‘well written’ or ‘critically acclaimed’ is also absurd. Just look at Big Momma’s House, a film that made nearly $200 million, half of which was from overseas, despite the overwhelming negative reviews. Sandra Bullock and Mellissa McCarthy’s comedy, The Heat, was far from perfect but still made over $200 million.

The only conclusions we can draw for the lack of diversity on our big screen is that: one, there aren’t enough scripts out there for a diverse range of actors; or two, and probably most likely, producers and studios are simply too scared.

Yet something is definitely on the horizon. It seems you can’t watch an awards show without every awarded actress mentioning roles for women, whilst the culture pages of every newspaper are crammed with articles about diversity.

And, slowly, it seems as if these words are turning into actions. You only need to look at the announcement of the all-female Ghostbusters cast, all of whom are hilarious and talented regardless of their gender, to see that something is stirring. Frankly I hope casting decisions like these inspire a revolution. I hope they help to create an industry in which the Best Picture Nominees at the Oscar, like in the TV categories at the Golden Globes, are split evenly between their protagonists. I hope they help to create an industry in which actresses who turn 40 find as much work as they did before.

The sad thing with the film industry, however, is that you never know. It’s a fickle business that is so unpredictable what might happen from one moment to the next. The only thing that is certain, though, is that the lack of diversity in film is simply not on, and desperately needs to change.