Reflecting on the breakout success of Mackenzie Crook’s Small Prophets, BBC comedy chief Jon Petrie is pleased that his team failed to land an American co-producer.

With nearly eight million views after its first 28 days, Small Prophets is the BBC’s biggest scripted launch of 2026 and one of its biggest of the decade.

Petrie acknowledged that funding the quintessentially British show was hard but said his team were “privately worried” about getting an American co-producer in place as they may have intervened on casting and wanted a different name than lead Pearce Quigley.

“It would have been hard to get Pearce Quigley in the lead,” he told today’s BBC Comedy Festival of the Detectorists alum. “Privately we were worried because you know what Americans are like, they would insist on having some mad name.”

The Office producer Ash Atalla, who was chairing the BBC Comedy Fest session, joked that an American would have insisted on “Pierce Brosnan instead of Pearce Quigley.”

As it was, the show about a man who turns to alchemy and homunculi in an attempt to learn what happened after his partner disappeared landed distributor funding from Sphere Abacus, which handles international sales. It also stars Michael Palin, Paul Kaye, Lauren Patel and Jon Ponting.

Although it hasn’t been officially renewed, Crook recently told us he is planning for a second season of Small Prophets.

Petrie was speaking at the BBC Comedy Festival in Liverpool alongside his counteparts at ITV, Channel 4 and Sky.

Channel 4 comedy boss Charlie Perkins concurred with the need to get an actor like Quigley in the lead for Small Prophets and said the best comedies “feel like they are excavating what is amazing about someone.” She used the example of Channel 4 talent like Sam Campbell and Josh Pugh, both of whom have upcoming shows.

Sky comedy chief Alex Moody pointed to Saturday Night Live UK and its “new discoveries of talent,” who did not have “loads of TV” experience when they came to the show but have made it a success.