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 have insisted 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.”

Petrie said American co-producers will often want to set shows in certain places, mainly London. Speaking alongside him, Alex Moody, who runs comedy for Sky Studios, joked that you will get Americans who don’t understand the geography of the UK “pitching shows set in Cornwall wanting to film on the West Coast of Ireland,” two places that are separated by a huge body of water.

As it was, Small Prophets, 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.

Asked whether she would have greenlit Small Prophets, ITV comedy head Nana Hughes joked: “Kevin [Lygo, head of ITV programmes] says I wouldn’t have thought it was funny and I think that I would have put it in front of Kevin and he’d have said no.”

Hughes said the comedy community should move away from splashy comedy-drama “that is just as expensive as [high-end] drama” and return to half-hour comedies, which are cheaper but “just as risky.”

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.

‘Saturday Night Live UK’ wouldn’t work on BBC

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.

That one has just been renewed for an extended 12-episode order and is the talk of the comedy community.

Petrie said he is a fan “and thinks it is better than the American one” but the show that costs millions of pounds per ep wouldn’t have worked on the BBC. “I don’t think we could really do something on that level,” he said, pointing to how heavily Sky is marketing the show.

The comedy chiefs were speaking before James Corden and Ruth Jones at the Comedy Festival in Liverpool.