Little wonders

Mackenzie Crook tells us about his magical new series starring comedy legend Michael Palin and Pearce Quigley

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Inspiration can strike in the most unlikely places - just ask Mackenzie Crook who was reading about a medieval Swiss alchemist, which sowed the seeds of a whimsical comic fairytale.

However, it would be 10 years before he began work on his new BBC sitcom Small Prophets starring his Detectorists colleague Pearce Quigley, national treasure Michael Palin and a host of stop-motion homunculi.

"The germ of the idea came from a strange little passage in a book about Paracelsus, a medieval Swiss alchemist," explains Mackenzie, 54.