Mackenzie Crook is back on BBC Two with Small Prophets, a six-part series that sees him play Gordon, the pedantic manager of a DIY store. The character will be familiar to fans of The Office, with Crook admitting: 'Pedantic and jobsworthy, he could be Gareth grown up, just with more disappointment.' The actor, now 52, has shifted his focus from cringe comedy to something softer, having been 'obsessed by being middle-aged.'
The story centres on Michael (Pearce Quigley), a fiftyish hoarder and twitcher whose girlfriend vanished without trace seven years earlier. His father Brian (Michael Palin) reveals he knows how to grow homunculi – miniature truth-telling creatures – and pushes Michael to follow the recipe. Crook describes the show as exploring 'lonely people' and 'ordinary people that something extraordinary happens to,' blending magic realism with suburban mundanity.
Crook deliberately moved away from the 'cruel humour' of The Office after his breakthrough role. 'I wanted to write something that wasn’t cruel humour, that didn’t have a cringe factor,' he explains. Influenced by David Lynch, Michel Gondry and 70s sitcoms like The Good Life, he has forged a genre of 'gentle comedy' that avoids cynicism. Supporting characters, such as Michael’s neighbour, were initially written as two-dimensional but evolved into more sympathetic figures.
Reflecting on his own life, Crook admits to being 'a little bit obsessed by being middle-aged.' He has two grown-up children – Scout, 19, and Jude, 22 – and describes the phrase 'grownup children' as 'a horrible expression.' The show, he says, explores melancholy but also finds humour in it: 'The butt of the joke is melancholy itself, but the melancholy is also real.'
