Friends Andy (Mackenzie Crook) and Lance (Toby Jones) are living in a small town in Essex. These gents have a proper Hobby (the capital letter is very much as it is treated in the series and their lives): they are detectorists, wandering fields with their metal detectors looking to unearth bits of the past that hopefully go beyond buttons and matchbox cars. Whenever they aren’t doing that, they are bumbling through their private lives. At the start of the series, Andy’s doing temp work to finance his archaeology degree and going through growing pains in the relationship with his long-term girlfriend Becky (Rachael Stirling). Those problems are mostly caused by him being a bit of a coward and the kind of dreamer who seldom does something about his dreams. At the same time Lance continues to pine after his horrible ex-wife (Lucy Benjamin). These things will change during the course of the series in a quiet tale of not just a male friendship but also late-blooming growing-up of the kind that doesn’t end up with anyone becoming something horrible like a banker, nor with giving up on childish things like being a detectorist. Also involved are the misadventures of the metal detecting club the two friends are members of, and the breath of buried history – even the Grail (the show’s just that British).
Mackenzie Crook, who not only acts but also writes and directs this wonderful BBC show whose until now final breath has been a pretty fantastic Christmas special in 2022, is apparently a detectorist in real life, which provides the show with a feeling of authenticity even when it goes through what sometimes can be rather standard comedy plots. There’s an idea of how to many people’s eyes rather silly hobbies – like being a detectorist, like going on endlessly about movies and TV on a blog – have the value of quiet, quotidian joy for the people involved in them, bringing with them moments of companionship and calm, as well as things to get unnecessarily but genuinely excited about. Crook generally portrays this and his characters’ foibles and weaknesses with a smile and sympathy, instead of the fist of judgement that’s so au fait these days. It’s not that he doesn’t understand or treat Andy’s and Lance’s failures and weaknesses as such, or seeks to excuse them, it just understands them as a part of how these people are, and not all that any given person is, and thus treats nearly everyone kindly. Generally, the series always seems to root for anyone to do better next time; they often do.
Tonally, Detectorists treats plots and beats that could absolutely make the basis for a minor soap opera with the unhurried patience of Andy and Lance walking a field before it is pub time. It never pretends the things that loom large and dramatically over anyone’s lives aren’t terrible, or painful, or wonderful, and being a comedy it is also never going to ignore them as an excuse for a joke, but it isn’t wont to dramatic gestures. Again, quietness and kindness are often at the centre of the show’s philosophy.
Below all this sits a meditation on a complicated idea of Englishness, informed not by bizarre things like bloodlines or skin colour but by the simple act of living and being in a certain place and relating to it, as well as a fascination with the small buried pieces of the past the protagonists look so patiently, sometimes bored, for. Repeatedly, the series includes bits and bobs of English folklore and culture, relates them to history as well as the present of the characters, never pressing too heavily for dramatic parallels (this simply isn’t that kind of show), but treating these things as the buried treasure and hidden connections they are for these characters. There’s a romantic longing here, not for reliving the past but for a way to be with the past, living one’s life with an acknowledgement of what’s come before. And, with the way Andy and Lance find the treasures of the past they do find, also a clear idea of the ironies of life.
That the series is also nearly always very funny indeed nearly feels like a bonus there.
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