‘Small Prophets’ Apple TV Review: Mackenzie Crook’s Gentle Comedy Finds Magic, Heart And Humor In A Grieving Man’s Cluttered Home

One of the most-watched and most-praised British TV series of 2026, Small Prophets runs against the grain of a good many contemporary trends in the medium. It’s short, tender, kind and not remotely cruel. There’s no hyper-complicated plot and no showy set pieces. A few special effects, a dash of mischief and, more than anything else, a group of lovable characters who make it all add up. Through those classic tools, and a chemistry that can only be described as charming, it delivers more than plenty of shows with far bigger ambitions.

Small Prophets centers on a middle-aged man barely getting by, who hasn’t been able to shake a kind of depression since his partner, Clea, vanished from his life seven years ago. Long-bearded and more than a little unkempt, Michael Sleep (Pearce Quigley) lives in a house that mirrors his state of mind: overgrown grass in the tiny front garden, clutter everywhere, boxes piled high. The only thing kept spotless is one room, preserved almost like a museum exactly as it was on the Christmas Eve his wife left. It doesn’t get much more depressing than that.

But Michael hasn’t lost his spark or his irony and, above all, he has a job. Or something like it: he works at a home improvement superstore and spends the day doing nothing except mockingly talking customers out of buying things. He doesn’t get along with his supervisor, played by the show’s creator, Mackenzie Crook, but he strikes up a warm friendship with a new hire, Kacey (Lauren Patel), who shares his sense of humor. His world is rounded out by his father, Brian (Monty Python star Michael Palin), who lives in a care home with the early stages of dementia; his (ex?) brother-in-law, who wants his house back; and a pair of nosy neighbors who are bothered by the state of the place and spend their time snooping on whatever he does or doesn’t do.

Over six half-hour episodes, Crook builds a warm story out of a fantastical pretext. His father convinces Michael to bring to life small humanoid creatures that, according to the old alchemists, can predict the future. Using an assortment of curious ingredients (old coins, rainwater, horse dung and so on), he sets about germinating the little beings, more or less, inside large jars. Those homunculi, Brian assures him, will tell him the truth about what happened to Clea. As he works on the project, he raises the suspicions of his neighbors and of Kacey, who becomes his ally, while his brother-in-law and other characters who turn up later try to get their hands on the house and some of the objects inside it.

Crook’s series (he’s also an actor, and you may know him from the original British version of The Office) plays with several parallel narrative threads, but at heart it’s nothing other than the portrait of an apparently hopeless man trying to climb out of that depression by way of a path tied to the fantastical. And while those elements are central to the plot, Small Prophets puts the emphasis on the human and emotional side of the character, especially his bond with his new friend and with his sweet but eternally confused father.

This is the kind of gentle series in which even the «villains» are lovable, starting with the supervisor and moving on to the neighbors, a few other coworkers and even the initially irritating brother-in-law. Beyond certain personal interests, there’s no real malice in any of them. The show’s gaze is so understanding and warm that it plays almost like a balm against the times we live in. But it isn’t nice in the more typically televisual manner of a Ted Lasso either (even if Apple TV’s acquisition of it may have something to do with chasing a similar hit), but in one that feels a bit more real and believable.

Although its fantastical elements, which set up the odd intense situation here and there, bring it closer to genre fare, at bottom Small Prophets shares a fair amount with the films of Mike Leigh in its humanist, empathetic portrait of British working-class life. Here, in a small, cluttered house on a forgotten cul-de-sac in a neglected corner of Manchester, a ragtag group of characters is doing its best to make its dreams come true. And if that takes magic or alchemy, so be it…