Small Prophets Review – Mackenzie Crook’s new magical comedy is pure, unadulterated fun | Mackenzie Crook

TYou don’t have to be told about the central premise of Small Prophets, the new comedy from Detectorists writer/director Mackenzie Crook, before you dive into it. In a show full of wonderful surprises, the main thing that happens is the most precious gift waiting to be opened. But what you should know is that this is everything Detectorists fans could want in its creator’s new project: the same sensibilities taking on imaginative new forms. Little Prophets is pure, unadulterated fun.

Our suave hero is long-haired, long-beard Michael (Pierce Quigley), the sole resident of an overgrown semi-detached house at the end of a cul-de-sac in south Manchester. His daily routine: waking up from a strange dream about birds, coaxing his wrecked Ford Capri back to life, driving to his boring job at a large craft store, going to his father’s nursing home for a repetitive conversation, and then returning to his silent home ready to do it all again tomorrow. It’s been this way since Christmas Eve seven years ago, when his girlfriend completely disappeared. They found her car at the Severn Bridge, but never found it.

This could be the recipe for a sad, bleak mood, with raindrops on the windows and sugar mixed in weak cups of tea. But this is a Mackenzie Crook show, so there will be wonder beneath the surface. The discoverers found a treasure buried in the soil and hidden among the trees. Here, Kroc takes on the more difficult task of revealing something truly remarkable about ordinary urban life.

We soon realize that Michael has the talents to confound anyone who might dismiss him as a weirdo. At first it’s about how he stays sane at work by indulging his talent in liquidation work when he spots a naive client. As he improvises an elaborate version of the old joke about tartan paint, or tells a man standing in front of a huge wall of bright blue buckets that the store unfortunately doesn’t sell buckets, there’s evidence of a mischievous mind on par with that of his father Brian (Michael Palin), who may be unable to consistently retain the information that Clea has disappeared, but is adept at constructing Rube Goldberg-style marble walkways.

When Brian proposes a scheme to confirm the truth about Clea that can’t possibly work, Michael and his younger colleague Kacey (their relationship, a kind of platonic, gender-flipped relationship in Harold and Maude, the most beautiful friendship you’ll see on TV for many years) open their hearts and minds to her. Crook then unravels a tale that, in anyone else’s hands, would turn into an easy whimsy. But he makes absolutely the right decision in every moment, big and small.

The most important thing is casting. For Michael, an outsider whose charm is obvious to those with a sense of sight, Crook takes Quigley, who was a supporting player in Detectorists, and gives him the lead role he deserves. Lauren Patel, who as far as I can see, previously appeared in Waterloo Road and nothing else, is sensational as the disillusioned yet hopeful Kacey. And as Brian, the cranky old man who only understands as much as he needs to? Michael Palin. He said enough.

The creations beneath the cast are unique delights as well. John Poynting plays Clive, a millennial version of the classic curtain-moving neighbor who keeps trying to tell Michael to trim his curvy hedge, but ends each encounter between them with his fingertips on his temples, confused and outgunned. Then there’s Crook himself as Michael’s nosy but ineffective boss, Gordon, who has a ponytail long enough to reach behind his back and pull right back with greasy fingers.

What is Kacey’s improbable dream, what is the last thing that made Michael cry, what Michael does in his house to keep Clea’s memory alive, what is the deal with the sullen teen who is endlessly running around in circles around the end—all of these are resolved through bursts of imagination that are fantastically improbable and yet, when said out loud, completely rational. If there was a box of gold on offer to the viewer who could predict how the scene in which Michael is mugged would turn out—how completely ridiculous, then deeply moving, and then both at once—no one would be able to claim the prize.

If there is a message or moral, it is that there are still wonderful things up for grabs in a world that may seem to be running out of them. The existence of the Minor Prophets proves the point: that British television can still create impossible miracles like this is a reason to continue to believe in magic.