Wonder Grows in Strange Places

TV SERIES REVIEW
Small Prophets
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Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Year Released: 2026
Runtime: 6 x 29m episodes
Creator: Mackenzie Crook
Writer: Mackenzie Crook
Director: Mackenzie Crook
Cast: Pearce Quigley, Lauren Patel, Michael Palin, Sophie Willan, Jon Pointing, Mackenzie Crook, Paul Kaye
Where to Watch: premieres on Apple TV on October 7, 2026

RAVING REVIEW: There’s something wonderfully ridiculous about watching two grown adults bury homemade creatures in horse manure because they might be able to predict the future. SMALL PROPHETS never treats that ridiculousness as a problem, nor does it spend much time trying to convince us that any of this makes sense. Mackenzie Crook instead asks us to accept that something impossible might be growing inside a suburban garden shed and then turns his attention toward the people desperate enough to believe in it.

Michael Sleep (Pearce Quigley) has spent seven years waiting for his partner Clea to come home. She disappeared without explanation, leaving behind a question that has essentially frozen his life in place. Michael still works at the same DIY store, keeps his routines, and regularly visits his father, Brian (Michael Palin), but very little about his life suggests he's genuinely moved forward.

Then Brian gives him an old recipe involving rainwater, horse manure, alchemy, and the creation of homunculi, tiny beings supposedly capable of predicting the future. Michael isn't exactly convinced, but when you've spent seven years without knowing what happened to the person you love, "this probably won't work" isn't much of a reason not to try. His coworker Kacey (Lauren Patel) joins the experiment, and soon the pair transform Michael's shed into a homemade laboratory while his neighbors grow increasingly determined to find out exactly what he's doing back there.

That premise is strange enough that SMALL PROPHETS could've easily turned into six episodes built around cute magical creatures and increasingly elaborate supernatural incidents. Crook is much more interested in Michael and Kacey sitting beside each other, talking about what they've lost, wanted, or never quite figured out how to say. The homunculi drive the story, but the friendship that develops around them is why the series works.

Pearce Quigley is fantastic because Michael never feels engineered to be lovable. He's odd, stubborn, and capable of winding people up purely because entertaining himself makes another day at the DIY store easier to survive. There's a particularly funny running quality to his interactions with customers, where his completely straight delivery makes it hard to tell how long he'll keep a joke going before finally helping somebody.

Quigley also understands the sadness underneath those eccentricities. Michael hasn't spent seven years loudly mourning Clea; he's simply constructed a life where her absence remains present in almost everything he does. That makes his decision to create the prophets feel less like a sudden embrace of magic and more like the first meaningful risk he's taken in a very long time.

Lauren Patel ends up being every bit as important to the series. Kacey initially seems positioned as the younger coworker who'll help Michael because the pairing is inherently funny, but SMALL PROPHETS quickly moves beyond that dynamic. She has her own disappointments and private ambitions, and Patel gives her enough edge that the relationship never becomes sentimental simply because two lonely people have found each other.

Their age difference doesn't matter because the series never forces them into the expected roles. Michael isn't there to teach Kacey how to live, and Kacey isn't there to drag Michael into the modern world. They simply enjoy each other's company, understand things about one another that others miss, and gradually become friends because both of their lives improve when the other person is around.

Michael Palin has considerably less screen time, but Brian quietly becomes another major part of the story. His failing memory creates comedy, particularly when conversations circle back to things Michael has already explained, yet SMALL PROPHETS is careful about where the joke sits. Brian isn't treated as the punchline, and Palin finds little flashes of awareness inside someone whose relationship with the present is becoming increasingly unreliable.

That relationship between Michael and Brian also gives the series some of its most affecting moments without announcing that it's time for everyone to become emotional. Their conversations can shift from funny to frustrating to sad in a few minutes because that's simply what their relationship has become. Palin's performance is restrained enough that even Brian's stranger ideas somehow feel completely reasonable as he explains them.

Crook fills the edges with people who could've become broad sitcom characters and usually finds something more useful for them. Sophie Willan and Jon Pointing are especially funny as Bev and Clive, the neighbors whose curiosity about Michael's activities keeps pulling them closer to something they can't understand. Clive's growing irritation is particularly entertaining because Michael can derail him with remarkably little effort.

Crook saves himself the much less sympathetic part of Gordon, Michael and Kacey's manager at the DIY store. Gordon is petty, irritating, and deeply invested in the tiny amount of authority his job provides. Still, the character gives the workplace scenes enough friction to prevent them from becoming merely another collection of quirky encounters. Paul Kaye also brings an uncomfortable edge as Clea's brother Roy, whose patience with Michael's refusal to move on is much thinner.

For all the warmth surrounding these people, SMALL PROPHETS occasionally pushes its eccentricity a little too deliberately. At times, you can almost see the series arranging another unusual character, awkward exchange, or whimsical detail because it knows that's part of its identity. Six short episodes keep that from becoming a major problem, but there are stretches where the gentleness feels slightly overmanaged rather than completely natural.

The supernatural side also creates a difficult balance as the season moves forward. The more tangible the prophets become, the harder it is for the series to maintain the wonderfully uncertain space where magic and ordinary life sit comfortably beside each other. The final episode increases the scale considerably, and while the payoff is entertaining, some of the quieter magic disappears once events become bigger and more urgent.

That doesn't undo what Crook has built. If anything, SMALL PROPHETS is strongest when absolutely nothing extraordinary is happening, whether Michael and Kacey are escaping work for a conversation or Brian is constructing something that makes perfect sense only to him. The show understands that wonder doesn't necessarily need to arrive with some enormous revelation.

Anyone familiar with Crook's DETECTORISTS will recognize his affection for people whose small lives would barely register in most television series. SMALL PROPHETS trades open fields and metal detectors for a cul-de-sac, a DIY superstore and an overgrown garden, but that interest remains. These characters aren't secretly important because something magical happens to them; the magic matters because they're already important to each other.

Grief runs through all six episodes, but the series never lets it become Michael's only defining feature. He's funny. He's annoying. He's kind. He can be childish, clever, and completely oblivious, sometimes within the same conversation. Clea's disappearance explains why his life stopped moving. Still, SMALL PROPHETS gradually becomes less interested in whether he can recover what he lost than in whether he can recognize what's appearing in front of him now.

That's why the relationship with Kacey ultimately matters more than whatever answers those little creatures might provide. Michael begins the series trying to ask the future one question about the past, while everything around him quietly offers another possibility. Maybe moving forward doesn't require forgetting anything at all.

SMALL PROPHETS earns its rating because beneath the manure, alchemy, nosy neighbors, and strange little creatures is a surprisingly simple story about two people finding a friend at exactly the right time. The supernatural elements make it distinctive, but they aren't what sticks. It's the possibility that even after seven years of standing still, something new can begin growing in the most unlikely place.

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[photo courtesy of APPLE TV, BBC FILM, BLUE HOUSE PRODUCTIONS, TREASURE TROVE PRODUCTIONS]

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