Gareth O'Callaghan: Small Prophets shows us how the monotony of life can still make space for magic

Lauren Patel, Michael Sleep, and Mackenzie Crook star in Small Prophets.

Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol once said: “The human obsession with purpose is merely a distraction from the absurdity of existence”. Let’s face it — life is absurd, to the point where it makes little sense when you weigh up its pros and cons. We’re all just wandering in circles. Existence is a loop. Hence our obsession with purpose.

What we’re searching for is a magical realism that hides itself somewhere in the humdrum of daily life, only to pop up unexpectedly when we thought it was lost.

It’s rare to find magical realism on television these days. It leaves me disillusioned in the moments I flick through the chaff in the hope of finding that elusive gem. It’s a reminder of why I didn’t own a television until I met my wife.

And then two weeks ago, eureka. There it was, drenched in magical realism. Tucked away on BBC2 on a dank dreary night, I discovered Small Prophets. Just for six short episodes, the clouds have parted and the screen in the corner has a purpose.

There are no spoiler alerts here. I want you to feel as cosy as when I sat down to watch the first episode. Pearce Quigley plays Michael Sleep, a gentle long-haired straggly-bearded giant of a hero who lives alone in your average English suburban cul-de-sac, in a house that has become a shrine to his partner Clea, who disappeared seven years before.

The burning question of whether she simply left him, or something more tragic occurred, is central to the mystery at the heart of the story. His sole aim as he battles a midlife crisis is to discover if she still loves him.

Michael Palin in Small Prophets — a show drenched in magical realism.

He drives to work in a DIY superstore each morning in his battered Ford Capri. It’s a job that bores him, so he passes the day winding up gullible customers with absurdly funny stories about tools and kit they’re searching for. In the evenings he visits his dad Brian, played by the gentle ever-Pythonesque Michael Palin, in a nursing home. His boss is the unlikeable yet somewhat-relatable Gordon, played by Mackenzie Crook, who also wrote and directed this charming series.

It might sound like your average episode of a day on the cobblestones of a famous street in Manchester. But wait. This is the domain of Crook, who gave us the magical realism of Detectorists. This is not a sudsy soap or a sad sitcom. Far from it.

Michael’s platonic friendship with the much younger Kacey, played by Lauren Patel, who he works with, is nothing short of beautiful and endearing. Together, with directions from his dad Brian, they set about creating magic — literally — in Michael’s garden shed. Unknown to his son, Brian dabbled in alchemy for most of his life, and passes on a secret recipe to Michael. Soon, the shed, which looks like a hoarder’s paradise, becomes the home of the homunculi.

Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay to Crook’s genius is that Small Prophets is impossible to describe accurately without skimping on the beauty of its simplicity and the awe of its gentleness. It’s the definition of magical realism. But what exactly is that?

As far back as 1925, the German art critic Franz Roh hatched the phrase “Magischer Realismus”, in an attempt to differentiate the “magic” of the normal world from the world of magic. From that came magical realism.

In her book Ordinary Enchantments, English literature professor Wendy B Faris suggests five elements that make up magical realism: an element of magic that can’t be explained by natural reasoning; a real-world setting; the audience caught between different ideas of reality and surprise; and the depiction of time as both history and the timeless. The result makes us question our understanding of time, space and identity.

Magical realism is one of my favourite fiction genres. I remember devouring One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The author’s inspiration came from his devoutly Catholic grandmother who told unlikely stories in the tone of truths.

 Colombian Nobel Literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

 Think of the scene where Remedios the Beauty ascends to heaven while folding a bedsheet. It’s real, yet it’s not — all at the same time.

It’s magical realism: everyday reality mixed with vague deceptions, much like Michael Sleep as he wanders around the aisles of his DIY superstore.

Another classic packed with magical realism is Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, a novel laced with alternate realities, where a boy can talk to cats, and a forest where he discovers a portal to an alternate world. 

Japanese author Haruki Murakami.

It also shows how the world of escapism makes the tedium and confusion of reality bearable.

Magical realism is hugely absorbing. In its written form, time stands still while you literally lose track of whole days in its power to mesmerise.

I never believed it would be possible to recreate magical realism in a small screen series tied to a very modest budget; but Mackenzie Crook has pulled it off so adroitly there’s not a bad review to be found. That’s defiance in a world of reality television that leaves little if anything to the imagination.

Sadly, the genre took a dive in the early 2000s, but it’s heartening to see it back on the small screen in what I call a rare gift. Crook describes his style as “gentle comedy”. It’s not side-splitting; it’s more wistful melancholy in moments that make you laugh when you see how awkwardly amusing the mundane can be.

Michael’s sense of loss for Crea is more keenly felt when his doting dad asks how she is, and has to be reminded that she disappeared long ago. “Oh,” Brian replies regretfully. Then just as Michael is leaving, his dad says, “give her my love”. It’s gently amusing, but painfully real.

Michael, meanwhile, finds solace in the doll-like medieval-looking supernatural creatures — homunculi — that he’s rearing in glass jars in the garden shed. His dad Brian had discovered while in Egypt how these small prophets have the power of omniscience and can answer any question they are asked. They can only tell the truth. For Michael, there can only be one question.

His boring job takes on a new role as he tells customers that the buckets and screws and hand drills they want to buy are no longer in stock — relics of the past, he tells them — even though the shelves are full of them. What we slowly discover is that Michael exists in the past, that he finds it impossible to move on and engage with the modern world.

His house in a cul-de-sac could be yours or mine. Crook’s gift allows us to see humanity in action. It’s in Michael’s obsessive curtain-twitching neighbours, in his pompous regimented boss, in his clunky relationship with workmate Kacey, which is the most beautiful pairing I’ve seen on television in years. It’s in the loss he wears on his sleeve for Crea, and most of all in the humanity he brings to superhuman creatures who just might lead him back to her.

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Small Prophets shows us how the monotony of life can still make space for magic, if only we took the time to take off the blinkers and allow our imaginations to roam. We were told as children that magic isn’t real. We’ve been the poorer for that ever since.

There’s not much on television these days that you could describe as charming. Small Prophets is an exception. It has reconnected me to magical realism, to the beauty of a talisman called Michael Sleep and his grief, to his dad’s visionary absurdity, and to the joy of real friendship — no matter how young or old you feel. For all of that, I say thank you.