Mackenzie Crook writes, directs and plays unhurried comedy about friendship, hobbies and the odd bit of English magic, and he is as good at it as anyone working in British television. His one real fault is that he is too kind to his own characters.
Fi1m perspective
Two men sit under a tree in an Essex field, saying nothing, while the camera stays wide and a breeze moves the wheat. Nobody cuts and nobody speaks, and after half a minute you understand that Mackenzie Crook thinks two contented friends are enough to look at. That shot, from the first series of Detectorists (2014), is his method in one piece. It moved us more than a comedy about ring-pulls has any right to, and what did it was the stillness: he does not reach for a joke to cover the quiet.
He did not start behind the camera. As Gareth Keenan in The Office (2001) he brought enough awkwardness of his own to stop the programme being a simple matter of everyone else being right about David Brent. As Ragetti, beside Lee Arenberg's Pintel in the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films (2003–2007), he stood at the edge of enormous scenes and said what we were thinking. Then, from around 2014, he began writing and directing his own material: every episode of Detectorists across three series, then Worzel Gummidge (2019), then Small Prophets (2026). Of the first he has said: "I hate the word gentle, that just sounds like unfunny – I like wistful." He is right about himself.
Friendship is what he does best, written so that neither man says what he means and both know what the other meant, and well cast. Toby Jones does the harder job in Detectorists, playing a man who has built his life around a hobby so he never has to look at the rest of it, and is funny without asking for pity. In Small Prophets, Pearce Quigley and Lauren Patel make two colleagues simply liking one another into the spine of the series, and Michael Palin keeps the sadness inside the joke rather than stopping the comedy to have it taken seriously. The magic arrives in ordinary places: a scarecrow at dusk explaining that the year has stuck; alchemy and stop-motion homunculi, animated by Ainslie Henderson and Will Anderson, in the suburbs. The worry about the land is in the pictures. The words are kept for jokes.
The faults are the same each time, and small. His plots are the weakest thing he writes: rival detectorists, who has permission for which field, a lost find, and now and then he leans on them to reach the end of a half-hour. Worzel Gummidge is slight and gives Steve Pemberton and Rosie Cavaliero chores and reaction shots when they deserved a scene of their own. In Small Prophets his fondness for nearly everybody makes the eccentricity feel approved in advance, as if being odd were already enough. We wanted a sharper exchange and did not get one. He protects his people so well that nobody gets hurt, and comedy needs someone to get hurt now and then.
A second run of Small Prophets is on its way, and he has also directed the second series of The Change, someone else's programme, which may do him good. Start with Detectorists if you have not seen it, and do not expect anything to be found.
Biography
Mackenzie Crook, also credited as Paul Mackenzie Crook, is an English actor, writer and director. Born on 29 September 1971 in Maidstone, Kent, he first gained prominence playing Gareth Keenan in the BBC sitcom The Office (2001–2003).
He is known for his role as Ragetti in the Pirates of the Caribbean film trilogy (2003–2007) and as Orell in Game of Thrones (2011). Crook created, wrote, directed and starred in the BBC series Detectorists (2014–2022) and wrote, directed and starred in the BBC revival of Worzel Gummidge (2019–2022). In 2026 he wrote, directed and appeared as Gordon in the BBC series Small Prophets.
