Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we! – William Shakespeare
I watched the Detectorists for the first time a few months ago. Then again, and a third time, and I’ve now watched the Christmas Special twice.
When the jokes arrived I smiled on two levels. At the joke, and with the recognition. I laughed at familiar absurdities as when Terry announces “I have in my hands a piece of paper that bodes grave news.” Russell replies “that doesn’t bode well” and Lance quips back at him “grave news seldom does.” The scout hall used by the Danebury Metal Detecting Club is jeopardised. So begins the Special.
One of my favourite lines from the earlier series is when Andy says “nostalgia conventions aren’t what they used to be.” When Terry prepares to give another lecture in the Special the club settle back for sleepy boredom yet again. Why do they attend if they are bored? They like it for other reasons. Lance has brought a neck pillow. Louise hands her girlfriend (Varde with the dazzling smile) a hot water bottle she clutches like it’s a bedtime story. The absurdity is amusing. Not because it’s absurd, but because we do such things.
In real life, Toby Jones (Lance) told a joke when he received an award for Detectorists. He talked with Mackenzie Crook before the event. “What are you doing this evening?” he asked him. “Taming my robin in the back garden” he said which apparently was true. This is one of the Detectorist themes where men are portrayed as quirky characters likable on their terms.
Shakespeare’s tragedies are what he is most famous for but his comedy is more profound. King Lear is maddened when he doesn’t like the ingratitude of his daughters and nothing he says makes any difference. The Midsummer Night’s Dream is a space where appearance and identities dissolve. We retreat from society, laugh in an enchanted forest, and there is a lesson.
In the world of the Detectorists, good things ultimately happen to good people. This is the concluding message of the series, encapsulated in the final moment of the Special which I won’t describe because you may not have seen it. Lance is lucky to find Toni but also the reverse. My favourite moment of the earlier programmes is when he looks at her, she pretends to look away, and spotlights switch on in the industrial yard where they work.
Becky and Andy are more central in the story, and arrive at a role reversal arrangement. She watches him playing with the baby showing an instinct usually associated with women. Toni is boyishly named, works with cars, wears dungarees, but she isn’t butch. In the Special, Becky asks Andy to “step up” and he replies with the most poignant hug of the series: I am here.
There are good themes in Detectorists. Andy and Lance try to save a tree from being felled and think it ridiculous complaining about the shadow it casts on the ground. In the Special they need money to save the scout hall. “Do you know how many clubs and societies use that hall?” Sheila says. We are a nation of hobbyists. Stephen Fry refers to this in his book The Ode Less Travelled. Write poetry he advises, for another interesting hobby. Sheila makes lemonade and goes tango dancing with Terry. In the Special, Russell announces that he’s started playing squash.
There’s a nostalgia in Detectorists, specifically for the land which provides meaning for Andy and Lance where detecting is symbolic. They do want to find gold, and enjoy the “time travel” of old artefacts (says Lance) but the topic is deeper. The earth and living on it is what matters, which I relate to in terms of walking. Their walking, for them, is no less important as they wander the fields of summer.
Lance’s former wife is awful, and you wonder how she fooled him. But we are content when his daughter exposes her and she is forced to leave Danebury. In the earlier shows, there’s a moment where Andy resigns from an archaeological job because of his principles. He doesn’t tell Becky. But principles rank very high in my daughter’s priorities, her mother tells him.
“You’re very welcome,” Lance mouths to Andy in the Special when he claims the discovery of gold. Lance found it, but gives the find to his friend so he can practice archaeology. Andy doesn’t know what he’s done. The world of Detectorists is no fuss kindness.
I watched a BBC nature programme before the Detectorists Special and declare an interest in tigers. They’re common in nature programmes so it’s a banal remark, but they’re gorgeous. Indifferent power, stalking the earth like they own it. But the moment in the film when I spoke aloud concerned a mouse. He’s flitting around in grass trying to evade a predator. Run little mouse! He does, and he gets away, and how important that is; how we cheer on the detectorists and the other characters.
Another theme is deep time which appears in the previous Detectorist shows but more in the Special. Historic lives are hidden in the land, so a Saxon coin becomes a connection like Sheila’s lemonade at the club. Rituals are a place of meaning. We know them, share them, find lemonade unpalatable, but Sheila made it.
In a critical study, Landscapes of Detectorists, there’s a juxtaposition between horizontal land and the vertical buildings of London and Lance’s first floor flat. It’s interesting, but incidental. The book doesn’t mention his curries. That he can only play guitar and sing when sitting. That the opening of Detectorists shows wild flowers.
Lance buys his “silly car” (according to Becky’s mother) in a shade of yellow which he sprays again as Aztec Yellow. The Aztecs were known for art made with gold. “What you got?” one of them says as they investigate a find in a farmer’s field. “Not much” the other replies. They seek gold, Lance and Andy, but already have it in warm summer days.
I write like this is a magazine column. With research, references, and a lot of time. If you like it, perhaps you would support me.