New images have been released for Small Prophets, the upcoming BBC comedy series created, written, and directed by BAFTA-winning filmmaker Mackenzie Crook. The six-part series, set to launch on BBC Two and iPlayer in early 2026, features a star-studded cast including Sir Michael Palin, Pearce Quigley, Lauren Patel, Sophie Willan, Jon Pointing, and Paul Kaye. Filmed in and around the Greater Manchester town of Urmston, the show blends everyday life with elements of oddball magic and animation.

The story follows Michael Sleep, played by Pearce Quigley, a quiet man whose partner Clea vanished seven years earlier. Since her disappearance, Michael has lived a simple life working in a DIY store, eating cereal, and occasionally visiting his father Brian, portrayed by Sir Michael Palin. The narrative takes a magical turn when Brian shares an old alchemical recipe involving rainwater, manure, and light alchemy, setting the central plot in motion.

Michael embarks on a quest to create Homunculi—tiny magical creatures believed to predict the future—with the help of his curious young colleague Kacey, played by Lauren Patel. As their unlikely friendship develops, their unusual behavior attracts the attention of nosey neighbors portrayed by Sophie Willan and Jon Pointing, who become obsessed with the activities in Michael's garden shed. Meanwhile, Clea's brother Roy, played by Paul Kaye, returns after falling on hard times, convinced his sister will never come back and determined to reclaim the family home.

Produced by Gill Isles for Treasure Trove and Blue House Productions, Small Prophets incorporates animated elements throughout the series. Crook described the project as having been "percolating for nearly a decade" and expressed excitement about collaborating with animators Ainslie Henderson and Will Anderson. BBC director of comedy Jon Petrie praised the series, stating it "brims with wit and wonder" and represents "British comedy at its finest."

A major outage at Amazon Web Services has disrupted operations for numerous popular applications and platforms globally, affecting millions of users. The cloud computing infrastructure failure began early Monday morning, with users reporting widespread issues accessing services including Snapchat, Duolingo, Zoom, and various gaming platforms. Amazon confirmed it was investigating increased error rates and latency across multiple AWS services, though the company has not yet identified the root cause of the system failure.

The disruption appears to have originated with servers hosted in the US-EAST-1 region, according to initial reports. This triggered a cascade effect that impacted AWS infrastructure supporting millions of websites and applications worldwide. Downdetector, a platform that monitors service outages, reported receiving over four million problem reports in a single morning—more than double the typical weekly volume—indicating the scale of the disruption across affected services.

Among the services experiencing significant operational problems are communication platforms like Zoom, Signal, and Slack; gaming services including Roblox, Fortnite, and PlayStation Network; social media applications such as Snapchat; and financial services from banks including Lloyds and Bank of Scotland. Streaming platforms Prime Video and Crunchyroll, along with educational tool Duolingo and design platform Canva, have also been affected by the cloud service failure.

The outage has manifested differently across regions, with Amazon's own websites remaining operational in Europe while still experiencing service-specific errors. AWS engineers are actively working to mitigate the issues and restore normal operations. The company has committed to providing regular updates as they work to resolve the widespread service disruption that has highlighted the internet's heavy reliance on cloud infrastructure providers.