‘Finding garbage and talking nonsense.’ That’s how Lance (Toby Jones) describes the life he and his best friend Andy (Mackenzie Crook) lead in Detectorists, the gentle and beloved BBC sitcom that started 10 years ago this month.
It’s exactly this low-key charm that has led to the series’ success. The story of two detectorists (never call them metal detectors, that’s the equipment) who spend their days scouring the fields of the fictional town of Danebury is a low-key look at the lives of two middle-aged hobbyists. Part of it is dedication that they keep track of anything found in the possession of a Roman, or perhaps an item from a Saxon ship buried in the local area. But it’s also about escaping the world around them, removing themselves from the riff-raff of North Essex and enjoying an idyllic life together.
Reflecting on the series, Crook (who also plays Gareth in The Office) says: “I decided to write something that was deliberately non-cynical and to stay away from the weird ’embarrassing comedy’ that was prevalent at the time.” He points out that the fact that the series was made cheaply and aired on BBC Four, a channel made precisely for obsessives like Lance and Andy, was key to its slow-moving success. “Those who found it felt they had discovered something special.”
This continued as Detectorists’ presence on Netflix opened it up to an international audience. Many new converts discovered the show during quarantine, when exploring the great outdoors was fraught with risk. It is described in France as “a delicious little thing that only British television knows how to make”. German numismatic site Coins Weekly is also a fan of this site. Detectorists couldn’t be less Hollywood, but the LA Times praised its “almost Shakespearean” quality. In 2018, after collecting a Bafta for his role as Lance, Jones talked about cycling in New Orleans; two men stop him outside a bar and tell him, “Dude, we love Detectorists!” he said. Oscar-nominated actor Carey Mulligan said he bought a detector after watching the show at his home.
Looking back, you’re struck by the fact that while Detectorists is routinely hilarious, it’s not a laugh-out-loud sitcom. The action is captured at the pace of life; Long scenes, directed by Crook, are filled with Lance and Andy searching for the reward they hope will change their lives. Both characters have jobs – Andy is an agency worker and Lance is a forklift driver – but work does not dominate their lives. To be a detectorist you need the luxury of time; This is something that will feel as rare and valuable as precious metals in 10 years.
Underlining this point, Jones explains: “Lance has a good life and he knows it. Unlike most people, he has time to join a club, spend days wandering the countryside with his best friend, and chat over a beer. “It’s part of Andy and Lance’s quality of life that makes detectorists so appealing.”
The show’s exploration of relationships that work and those that need more time and care lies at the heart of its muddy spirit, especially in terms of male friendship.
The first series was ahead of its time in looking at the nature of masculine friendship and the things men find difficult to discuss. A 2018 study found that 27% of men had no close friends, and 22% of men aged 55 and over had never seen their friends. It’s not hard to see, for example, how The Detectorists paved the way for the similarly sensitive and polished Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing.
“Andy and Lance are completely comfortable around each other; They need each other, they trust each other, and they have nothing to prove,” says Crook. “The first pieces I wrote were a series of conversations between two characters in a field. They were relaxed and not interested in anything special; “It wasn’t about the lad’s pub jokes or football, but rather about the challenges of answering questions in the University Competition.”
“There’s an unspoken love in their relationship,” Jones says of Andy and Lance’s friendship. “Some friends, especially men, express their love by joking and overcoming difficulties together, but I don’t think we ever sit down and discuss how this is about male relationships – it’s also evident in these scripts.”
He adds: “Mackenzie and I are in long-term relationships with partners, and there are a lot of differences between romantic relationships and friendships that overlap and don’t overlap. At the end of the day, they’re in a relationship together.”
But it was a different duo that first inspired Crook to write the series. He was not a detector expert but a curious hobbyist; Jones amusingly let it slip that the coin collection seen on the wall of Lance’s trailer, next to a poster of Linda Lusardi, actually belonged to Crook.
Its introduction to the world was via an episode of Time Team in which a pair of detectorists claimed to have found Viking artifacts at a site in Yorkshire. The often difficult relationship between amateur detectorists and TV archaeologists, perhaps reflected in Detectorists through Simon & Garfunkel’s malevolent characters, struck it as a rich source of comedy and pathos. “There was something fishy about these guys, and a sense that they weren’t telling the whole truth,” he says. Later, when it came to writing the second series, Crook found three pages of doodles in a notebook from 1999 outlining a forgotten idea called Metal Detectors (rookie mistake there). “Turns out I had been percolating this idea for ten years before Time Team brought it to the surface.”
The romantic notion that the things worth having in life are often right in front of you is also reflected by musician and actor Johnny Flynn in the show’s exciting theme tune. Flynn and Crook bonded over their shared love of US artist Iron & Wine when they starred together in Jerusalem in the West End. Crook eventually contacted Flynn and explained that he wrote the first drafts of The Detectorists while listening to his music, feeling that the story he had in mind was similar in tone to the folk songs that Flynn had recorded with his band, Sussex Wit. Flynn agreed to write the theme tune and eventually composed the music for all three series.
“I decided to write a song from the Treasury’s perspective,” says Flynn of his song Detectorists, which has more than 20 million streams on Spotify alone. “The whole track came from that song. There was always a sparkle calling out. “This treasure is what directs the fate of the characters, and the song, in a way, wrote itself.”
For a long time, Flynn did not play Detectorists in concert for fear of becoming “a one-hit wonder where people came to shows just for that song.” But in recent months he’s put it back on his set list and performed it in more unexpected venues, too. “I get a lot of requests to sing this song at weddings and even funerals and I do it occasionally. This really works for a lifelong love or someone down to earth.
The show returned for two more series and ended with a moment where Lance and Andy’s efforts were rewarded; They discovered a treasure trove of gold coins hidden in a magpie’s nest. Crook regards his time filming Detectorists as a bed of roses. ““The sun was always shining, the sky was always blue, everyone was laughing and I wasn’t grumpy at all,” he says. Jones echoes that sentiment: “Those three summers we spent shooting were like vacations.”
While the demand for more Detector experts has never waned a decade after its debut, Crook believes he’s done with the show. “I won’t make any more Detectors, but no one should worry. “We made just the right amount of money,” he says. “That said, I know Toby wants to do a live stadium tour…”
• Detectors on BBC iPlayer and Netflix