BBC2/iPlayer, Monday, 10pm
As soon as I hear words like ‘quirky’, ‘warm’ and ‘gentle’ used to describe a TV comedy, my first instinct is to run a mile. Let’s face it, ‘quirky’ in this context often means ‘twee’, while ‘warm’ translates as ‘dull’. And as for ‘gentle’, it just means the show isn’t very funny, right?
But, Small Prophets – perhaps the word-of-mouth TV comedy sensation of the year so far – is unashamedly quirky, wonderfully warm and in many ways disarmingly gentle. There is way more to it than that, though. It was created by Mackenzie Crook, aka pitiful dweeb Gareth from The Office, which was the opposite of quirky, warm and gentle. He did give us three gently delightful series of the warm and quirky Detectorists, though, so…
