Another season of Small Prophets is coming – but it will be its last.
Writer-director Mackenzie Crook’s hit comedy has been a resounding success, becoming the BBC’s biggest scripted launch of the year and its biggest comedy launch since 2024. It stars Pearce Quigley as Michael, who is struggling to come to terms with his partner’s disappearance, and whose father (Michael Palin) has a journal relaying how to conjure homunculi, magical creatures in jars who foretell the future.
Although the series took ten years to come to fruition, Crook affirmed in a new interview that he wants to conclude the story, albeit in timelier fashion. The final episode ended with the phrase ‘To be continued…’
“I want to write a second series. I want it to be eight episodes and then I want to leave it there,” Crook told Deadline. “I haven’t written it yet. I don’t know exactly what happens, but I think that would be great. First half [ends with] to be continued. Second half; the end. And there’s your story.”
“The majority of the ten years was figuring out what it was,” he explained. “Now I know what it is, I just have to go and finish off the adventure.”
He added: “I’m quite excited about that because I want to know what happens next and I’m the one who gets to figure that out. I do feel a real responsibility now. Obviously I hoped it would go down well, but I didn’t realize how people would take it to their hearts so immediately. All these reactions have been so positive and heartfelt that I can’t fuck it up.”
“There’s hopefully a kindness and a heart at the center of it,” he said of the show’s appeal. “But it’s been a surprise, I suppose, to find that it’s appealing to such a such a wide audience.”