Small Prophets review: Mackenzie Crook’s bittersweet comedy is pure delight
Mackenzie Crook’s new six-part comedy is a small, uncanny miracle — tender, funny and quietly strange. Set in a south Manchester cul-de-sac, Small Prophets follows Michael Sleep, a man who turns to folk alchemy after his partner vanished seven years earlier. The result is a show that blends everyday modesty with genuinely moving flights of imagination.
A deceptively simple premise that blooms into wonder
On the surface, the programme starts from familiar terrain: a solitary, slightly ragged protagonist, a humdrum retail job and the ache of an unresolved loss. That ordinariness is Crook’s launchpad. Michael’s daily life — waking from a dream about birds, coaxing a battered Ford Capri into life, shifts on a DIY shop floor, and gentle, repetitive visits to his elderly father — is rendered with a patience that makes the unexpected feel earned rather than tacked on.
The show’s central conceit is both oddball and achingly human. Michael attempts an ancient recipe and produces tiny jarred beings, homunculi, which can answer questions or foretell the future. The procedure involves rainwater, a touch of manure and a kind of homegrown alchemy; what follows is less about spectacle and more about how these small miracles illuminate grief, hope and the awkward bravery of moving on. Crook resists turning the premise into pure whimsy; instead he lets the magic be a gentle agent of change in the lives of ordinary people.
A cast that elevates every quiet moment
Pearce Quigley is an inspired lead. Where he was once a memorable supporting presence, here he carries the show’s emotional centre with a disarming mix of vulnerability and mischief. His Michael is the sort of outsider who invites empathy rather than pity; his small acts of kindness and wilful eccentricity feel lived-in, not performed.
Lauren Patel, as Michael’s much younger colleague Kacey, is a revelation. Their relationship — platonic, mischievous and unexpectedly tender — becomes the series’ emotional anchor. It’s a fresh, beautifully observed friendship, and Patel‘s performance brings a steady warmth that complements Quigley’s quieter rhythms.
The casting coup is the returning presence of a much-loved veteran actor in the role of Michael’s father, Brian. His scenes are a constant reminder that eccentricity and wisdom can coexist: he forgets some facts but engineers delightfully elaborate Rube Goldberg-style contraptions and offers offbeat counsel when it matters most. The ensemble around them — from a nosy neighbour to a shifting array of shop-floor characters — is filled out with small, memorable turns that Crook gives the space to glow.
Greater Manchester as more than just backdrop
Filmed across Greater Manchester, the series makes suburbia sing. Local pub interiors, familiar retail parks and riverside footpaths convert the everyday into a stage for quiet revelation. The production leans into real places — a tool-store frontage doubled as the DIY workplace, a small café standing in for the show’s diner — and the geography helps root the fantasy: the homunculi don’t feel out of place so much as perfectly at home in damp jars on ordinary kitchen shelves.
There is also a clear affection for the rhythms of community: the nosy neighbours, the shop-floor banter, the slow churn of routines that both comfort and confine. Crook mines those details for laugh-out-loud moments and for the small heartbreaks that give the series its emotional weight.
Small Prophets is not a show about big set pieces. Its pleasures come in micro-revelations — an offhand joke that lands, a quietly staged scene that breaks your heart, a tiny creature in a jar that changes someone’s course. It’s a work that trusts its audience to notice, and rewards attention with a rare combination of sweetness, wit and a sharp eye for human frailty.
