SPOILERS: Small Prophets.

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This is a thread for those who have watched the series and are desperate to post and discuss. It seems that the no spoilers free thread is being inundated with those who understably love it. Post away! I love it.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt38504111/

I’m assuming Clea left because whatever she was doing with the curios she was collecting was illegal. It’s obviously her writing to Michael’s father and her who made the phone call.

I can’t see how a second series would focus on that house as it’s being sold. The book presumably is now worthless because the meteor burned a hole in it.

There were lots of good ideas that weren’t really fully realised . I became irritated with the depiction of the couple next door. It was a bit stereotypical and there was too much focus on them.

No employer is going to tolerate their employees just walking out for most of the week , that annoyed me. I know poetic licence is involved, but it was silly.

I think the little prophets were well done . As other have said, too many loose ends and I felt it needed a lot of tightening up , refinement and editing. Looking forward to a new series though.

I felt Michael Palin was fine, but there’s no way he would be allowed to have his room like that in a care home.

That’s a good point!

I didn’t notice any of that! Thank you.

The "too many loose ends" was deliberate. Hence the words "To be continued" at the end of the last episode. MC has two more series planned, I read.

@Gonefishingithink I was pleased to read your comment and I agree. (I was beginning to think I was the only person who didn't absolutely love it!) Some of the characters were just too overdone and there are several loose ends. I suspect some of them might not be tied up in the next series either. I did enjoy aspects of it but was disappointed overall.

I wonder if they'll all be answered though. With some series, they aren't and I get the impression they're written as they go along so things get forgotten.

I watched it through, and now catching some of it again as DS is watching it.

The excavation of the jars from the manure - weird (but hilarious) birth references, from Kacey’s prone position to the dialogue and the noises. Uncomfortabley funny!

I need to look out for the police and the rabbits.

Knowing MC and his writing I would guess the opposite. He always seems very deliberate in the loose ends he leaves hanging and ties things up beautifully.

I think it was just the juxtaposition of Constable Sergeant. I remember Juliet Bravo.

I felt Michael Palin was fine, but there’s no way he would be allowed to have his room like that in a care home.
I was thinking what a nice care home it was where people were allowed to be themselves.

I hope so.

Me too! ☺️

All the rabbits are a bit like Alice’s adventures in wonderland as well but the creepy hallucination was definitely Donnie Darko. I imagine that if all this imagery is leading to a re-birth, that little paved over cul-de-sac might erupt into life. Giant slugs and ants might terrorise the woman who keeps killing them. Perhaps Elliott is a Druid.

I really loved it. I was a bit put off at first when the normie neighbour Cliff/Clive was wanging on about the massively overgrown garden. I thought ‘that’s not an overgrown garden, it’s just a nice, living garden!’. I liked the unfolding message about how it’s good to make space for nature. I always get jealous of what big nice sheds with electricity people have in films, too.

I agree MC writes characters with a mix of good and bad and I think that’s what makes them so interesting. I love the versions of England he writes that are a little bit kindly and eccentric andhave a gentleness abd beauty behind the surface that can be tough. I think he writes men characters well as fully rounded and complex people emotionally which is unusual. Not just as pure comedy or action or romantic figures but as people having an inner life too.
That said the brother character puzzled me a bit. He was a villain then a nostalgic boy, why’s he so involved, what’s the link with the house etc etc.
I loved all the lead characters. More backstory on Gloria, Gordon, Brigham and Elliot next series please.

Watch with subtitles, it’ll tell you what the music is as it plays (I watch in bed, not deaf).

Didn't they exist in another dimension and so this was just the physical form of them still in the other dimension? And that they'd reached divination so I assumed didn't need their physical bodies anymore.
I'm sure their physical bodies were going to die regardless as the natural next step after divination.

Something along those lines anyway, I'm going to rewatch it at some point and look out for the explanations more.

I've worked in a care home and there was a male resident whose room was not dissimilar to Brian's room.

Yes, I was wondering what made the previous poster say that. My Dad was in a care home for the last 18 months of his life. He had 19 very large model trains in individual glass cases all around the room... they filled it...nobody batted an eyelid! Most residents are encouraged to 'make it their own' as it's their home!

I think if they have won enough money on the lottery , Michael might buy the house from Clea’s brother .

I am sure that Michael said how he and Clea met - but can’t remember now .I think it was a shared hobby , but can’t remember .

I think the Christmas re- inaction was from 1977 and he tried to replicate the photo he had with Clea and her family . I think he also said that was when she was at her happiest .

As others have said , I don’t understand why those that were trying to find the valuable bird book waited 7 years to track Michael down / enquire about the storage units .

Also if Clea is in Canada , I assume unless she had bought a fake passport that she would have taken her passport with her . If Michael/ police had checked at the time they would then have concluded she was alive .

My late father never went into a care home but his house was a lot like that. It took some clearing because I wanted everything he valued to go to a good home.

I’m not sure why the lady who worked with Clea didn’t try to find her before or find out where the stock was. It was in three lock ups previously, surely her and the other man would have tried something before seven years ! She knew she had gone missing ( I think)
Only one book was worth that much money ? Why now? Although I suppose that after seven years you can deal with a missing persons affairs , maybe they couldn’t do anything before because of the rules around missing people ? Not sure, but seems a long time to wait.

I don’t think the lady did really work with Clea did she? She didn’t know Michael’s name. The brother played by the Dennis Pennis bloke told her Michael was called Hamish and she believed him.
I think the seven years’ wait was tied up with being legally able to have Clea declared dead after that timescale.

Ahh! That makes sense now. I did think the woman did work with her before.
They obviously managed to trace the whereabouts of the bird book back to Clea! Not sure how, but they did it somehow.
May be more rare books among the boxes then!
Might be why she took off as people were after her.

It wasn't any old bird book it was this one.

In March 2000, Sheikh Saud Al-Thani of Qatar purchased a copy of The Birds of America at a Christie's auction for $8.8 million, a record for any book at auction.[70]
In December 2010, The Economist magazine estimated that, adjusted for inflation, five of the ten highest prices ever paid for printed books were paid for copies of The Birds of America.[71] Of the 120 copies known to survive, only thirteen are held in private collections.[72] In March 2000, the Fox-Bute copy sold at Christie's, New York, for $8,802,500.[73][74] In December 2005, an unbound copy, the Providence Athenaeum Set,[74] sold, again at Christie's, New York, for $5.6 million.[75]
On 6 December 2010, a complete copy of the first edition was sold in London at Sotheby's for £7,321,250[76][77] during the sale of Magnificent Books, Manuscripts and Drawings from the collection of the 2nd Baron Hesketh. The winning bid was a record auction price for a printed book and was placed by London-based art dealer Michael Tollemache, who outbid three others during the auction.[77] According to the provenance details reported by the auction house, the copy's original owner was Henry Witham of Durham, listed as subscriber 11 in Audubon's Ornithological Biography; the first volume of the set bears a presentation inscription from Witham's wife, dated 24 June 1831.[76] Lord Hesketh had bought the copy from a descendant of Witham at a Christie's auction on 3 July 1951, paying £7,000.[76]

Celebrity Barrel Scraping, following on from Barrel Scraping, is THE BEST putdown ever of the utter shite that is reality TV. It's dropped in to the conversation quite early in the series when Kaycee tells Michael what she's been watching the night before. You had to be really paying attention but in a later scene, Sophie Willan's next door neighbour is laying in bed watching her husband at the window with the binoculars and on the tv in the background is a bloke scraping the paint off the bottom of a barrel. McKenzie Crook, you are sublime ❤