Practitioner
Griffin McInnes
Co-deviser and showrunner, The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries (Outside the March)
Interviewed 5 August 2026, 12:00 PM
Works The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries — 1,200+ households, 23 countries, ~40 cast
Experienced for this research The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries, 19 July 2026, 5:00 PM — inspector Madeleine Brown
This page is provisional until Griffin McInnes has reviewed it for error. That undertaking was given at the outset of every interview and it stands.
The object is a MacGuffin
Early in rehearsal the performers focused on the lost item. The discovery was that they have to move away from it immediately. The job of the first call is dramaturgical — want and need — beyond the object: what this person hopes for, what texture they want their life to have. The harder thing is working out what they want from the experience itself, and what takes them from “this is fun” to something sadder. “We aren’t their therapist.”
Warmth as the mechanism
They never used the words whimsy or delight; they used connection, and insisted it feel optimistic. The word pandemic never appeared in the show or its marketing at the time. It gave people a safe avenue for talking about what they were doing, and also not that. He describes it as a trojan horse for “what do you want to talk about for a week.”
What a thousand strangers taught him
People are starving for presence. We all carry armour through the world, often for good reason, and it is exhausting. Permission to put it down is increasingly rare. The show gave people an excuse to not look at a phone for ninety minutes and be present with someone.
The case file
He showed me the working document behind my own week of calls. See below.