Micheal Sleep (Pearce Quigley) is a man living a life half awake to the world outside it. Half working in a DIY store where he actively spreads misinformation about buckets having gone out of use. Half waiting, seven years after her unexplained disappearance, for his wife Claire to return. Everything in his home is left in a state of suspension. His Father ( Micheal Palin) who is in a care home, suggests to his son that he dig out an old folder about homunculi that he once grew in jars. These small prophetic emanations, maybe able to tell him whether Claire is still alive, let alone whether she still loves him. And so he starts cultivating them in his dilapidated garage.
Small Prophets is a beautifully conceived piece of eccentric whimsy written by Mackenzie Crook. Like in Detectorists, his previous cult hit, he manages to capture the essence and lonely obsessiveness of the modern single man. Who becomes consumed by one idea or activity to the point of loosing touch with ordinary reality. Existing inside this sub-realm hermetically sealed off from other, apparently more sane, people. Over its six episodes, Small Prophets slowly captures your imagination and your devotion.
It's filled with lovely details in its script. Michael's house and garden is a wildly unkempt mess, that his nosey parker neighbour's are simultaneously both intrigued and incensed by. The teenage boy who is shown repeatedly cycling around and around the close. Michael's ineffectual manager at the DIY store, (Mackenzie Crook) constantly strokes his long pony tail behind his back, whilst having no real control over his workforce, and is obsessed with them 'taking their breaks'. The way Micheal adopts his Father's emphatic insistence that the beings in the jars are not little people ' they are homunculi '. The locked room in the house where Micheal has preserved a detailed recreation of a 1970's Christmas for his absent wife to come back to.
The premise sounds distinctly odd when written down, but this series has ooodles of charm and a lightly salted satirical humour, that does really grow on you. With these occasionally deeply touching moments that just pop out at you out of the blue. Like all Mackenzie Crook's writing Small Prophets has a warm gently beating heart at the centre of it, that we can all identify with.
CARROT REVIEW - 7/8
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