I dug up the BBC’s DETECTORISTS on Netflix ★★★★☆
This lovable tale of hobbyist eccentricity is a buried treasure.
This single-camera BBC comedy series debuted in 2014, but it’s taken me four years to get around to it. It’s been lying in the dirt just waiting for me to discover it, one might say. I must confess the concept didn’t hook me when it launched on BBC Four (a channel that also isn’t synonymous with fantastic original comedy), but Detectorists is a surprisingly amiable and heartwarming slice of British eccentricity.
This is very much the product of Mackenzie Crook (Gareth from The Office), who writes and directs every episode while co-starring as Andy Stone. His character’s a middle-aged man who loves nothing more than sweeping fields for buried metal in his leisure time. Andy’s usually joined in his pursuit by best friend Lance Stater (Toby Jones), a forklift driver divorced from a hippy wife he still holds a candle for, despite the fact she’s moved in with the manager of the local Pizza Hut.
Some of series 1’s most poignant and awkward sequences involve Lance making excuses to drop by his ex-wife Maggie’s (Lucy Benjamin) New Age supplies shop for a chat, only to find her new man Tony’s (Adam Riches) there and loves nothing better than metaphorically flexing his alpha male muscles in poor nerdy Lance’s direction. Toby Jones has a particular gift for playing downtrodden dweebs who keep getting knocked down by life, and whose very peaceable nature makes it hard for them to change that.
Andy and Lance are members of the Danebury Metal Detecting Club (DMDC), which comprises proud club president/retired cop Terry (Gerard Horan), his ditzy wife Sheila (Sophie Thompson), northern weirdo Russell (Pearce Quigley), shy Hugh (Divian Ladwa), stroppy Louise (Laura Checkley), and shy Varde (Orion Ben).
They’re a believable bunch of social misfits, although one of series 1’s few problems is how the emphasis is very much on Andy and Lance to the exclusion of almost everyone else in the DMDC. It’s forgivable because the show is new and they’re the characters we need to care about the most, but there are times when it just seems strange you never see anyone else combing fields for buried antiquities. It’s a problem they wisely correct in series 2 as the supporting players are given more to do and deepened slightly, although the quality of those subplots is far weaker. There’s a sequence where Russell and Hugh detect at a dogging site frequented by the Mayor that’s… well, tonally misjudged.
The first series is undoubtedly the best of the two I’ve seen (series 3 isn’t yet on Netflix) because you clearly see it’s Crook telling the story he’s likely wanted to tell with these characters for years. Or had loosely sketched out in his head for a while. Over the initial six episodes, one enjoys a clear and enjoyable arc that’s tightly written and enormously satisfying to see play out. In some ways it’s a shame the ending couldn’t be the “perfect” one it’s all been leading to, but that would also have meant no more episodes.
Andy and Lance go looking for legendary Saxon treasure on a local farm owned by the delightfully batty farmer Bishop (David Sterne), who owns two “invisible dogs” and may have murdered his wife. And as they go about their task, various struggles get in their way: young attractive newcomer Sophie (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) turns Andy’s eye after expressing an interesting in metal detecting, which doesn’t go down well with his jealous girlfriend Becky (Rachael Stirling); and there’s unwanted attention from rival detectorists “Simon and Garfunkel” (Simon Farnaby and Paul Casar), who take great pleasure in hampering or sabotaging whatever the DMDC is getting up to.
One thing that’s instantly delightful about Detectorists is its style and carefree attitude. It’s lighthearted programming to make you smile. There’s nothing challenging about the type of humour or mix of relationships, but it’s also not every day you find a comedy about boring people who like to walk up and down fields for a pastime.
You even learn a little about metal detecting along the way, and I must confess the show makes it seem an oddly enjoyable thing to do. Or to at experience the once. It’s no less ridiculous than birdwatching or fishing, is it? It’s just another way to hang out with a like-minded mate for a few hours, before enjoying a flask of tea together under a tree in a cornfield buzzing with bees in the middle of July.
What’s so terrible about that? Last of the Summer Wine lasted years by presenting an idyllic vision of the English countryside, populated by daft eccentrics.
Detectorists isn’t a laugh-a-minute experience, but it contains the kind of gentle humour and keenly observed characters that are slowly becoming a novelty. The trend in comedy has been to follow the American model, with fast-paced stories, an abundance of jokes, flashy camerawork, high concepts, famous faces… and it can be a little exhausting. There may be far less homegrown sitcoms millions of Brits watch and love today, but those that work always feel more special and “classic”. Sometimes purely because you can remember individual episodes (as the whole show may only produce 12–24 instalments) and your favourite jokes are thus easier to remember.
What’s your favourite Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt joke? Yeah, it’s hard to even think of one off-hand. But how about your favourite Blackadder joke? I bet you have at least three in your head ready to rattle off.
Anyway, the first two series of Detectorists come highly recommended, although series 2 is notably inferior.
The arc of series 2’s self-contained story is less interesting and more confused, with a young German called Peter (Daniel Donskoy) asking for help locating his grandfather’s WWII aircraft that was shot down over the county. Peter inevitably becomes a new love interest for Sophie, but it’s not a convincing relationship and Donskoy doesn’t click in the role (not helped by the fact he dislikes the very likeable lead characters).
Andy and Lance also grapple with fatherhood (Andy has a new baby, Lance meets his grownup daughter), but what their change in circumstances brings to the show is of mixed quality and separates them too much for my liking. Lance’s new situation seemed particularly crowbarred into the narrative, just to try and give him something to do since Maggie inexplicably vanished.
I’ll be sure to watch the third series when it arrives on Netflix (alas, BBC iPlayer only had a few of the later episodes still available), and I’m interested to see if Crook manages to correct some of series 2’s mistakes… while finding a way for his niche idea to generate another half-dozen stories. But Detectorists doesn’t strike me as the kind of show that could run forever, unless the hobby of the title becomes more background activity to what the characters are doing elsewhere in the village. Or would that just eat away at what makes the show work?
Cast & Crew
writer & director: Mackenzie Crook.
starring: Mackenzie Crook, Toby Jones, Rachael Stirling, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Gerard Horan, Lucy Benjamin, Adam Riches, Sophie Thompson, Pearce Quigley, Divian Lawda, Laura Checkley, Orion Ben, David Sterne, Simon Farnaby, Diana Rigg, Alexa Davies, Rebecca Callard & Daniel Donskoy.
