The most refreshing thing (of many) about Mackenzie Crook’s The Detectorists is that, unlike much English comedy, it does not exist to neutralise the cruelties of the class system —the syndrome identified by Zadie Smith in a devastating and now legendary essay about her comedy-addicted working-class father. Instead, it basically ignores it. The Essex village (‘Danebury’) inhabited by its two hobby metal detectorists Andy (Crook) and Lance (Toby Jones) seems to be populated mostly by working-class people, the posh element a glorious irrelevance (apart from Diana Rigg as an initially terrifying mother-in-law and the dubious accent affected by a rival duo of metal hunters).
When English comedy is not an opiate to numb bitterness, what can it be instead? (The only other comparable show that I can think of is the brilliantly inventive Black Books, in which class-based humour also plays no role, but that is a work of transplanted Irish comic genius.) The Detectorists is completely outside the genre of English comedy that, as Smith notes, makes a mockery of hope because hope can only lead to disappointment in a rigged system. Instead it does the opposite, incrementally kindling optimism about relationships and everyday life’s possibilities within its self-effacing male protagonists: they expect nothing, and ultimately receive much. At the same time, it is also about a wish to transcend this ordinary life with a truly tremendous find, a wistfulness to which pretty much everyone, everywhere can relate —and have. The show has become a worldwide sleeper hit, despite its intense Essex particularism (and to the bewilderment and dismay of its retiring creator). Crook’s perceptive identification of a fascination with archaeology amongst a certain type of working-class Englishman had me nodding in recognition as I cast my mind over my circle of friends and acquaintances, and wondering whether there is some deep psychocultural reason for it, an unconscious pre-Norman nostalgia at work.
The Detectorists is in a way like an English Seinfeld, each episode milking small day-to-day events for humour. The amusement generated, however, is mostly subtle rather than uproarious, tapping into a pre-Python tradition of English comic writing. Unlike Seinfeld’s writers, who anchor the show completely in modern New York, Crook evokes the notion of something old and glorious hidden just beneath the surface of contemporary life, mining the dissonance between modern Essex and ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. This is a similar theme to that of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, in which Crook starred as the failed DJ Ginger, but here it is played more for laughs, additional entertainment derived from the script’s contradictory hints at surprising continuities. Crook’s writing throughout is extraordinarily rich, surfacing many instances of the gnomic and ineffable in everyday chatter, and there is a bittersweet element also missing from the raucous cheer of Seinfeld. A particularly amusing and magical sight gag comes when the Detectorists and their friends from the Danebury Metal Detecting Club get fed up of searching fruitlessly for an Anglo-Saxon ship burial, down tools for the day and (of course) go to the pub, and the camera pans out to show the outline of the ship immediately behind them.
There are numerous other very unusual touches as well. Crook took particular care to insert lyrical nature shots throughout the show, and has explained that this fascination derived from his boyhood in Kent, in which his father would take him on long countryside jaunts. The now-ubiquitous actor Johnny Flynn is also a very fine English folk revival singer, and here provides the evocative original — but highly authentic-sounding— theme song, his singing reminiscent of Nic Jones. (In a particularly memorable scene, he also performs at the pub’s folk night.) As the theme plays, the camera moves down through layers of soil to rest on something that looks like the Alfred Jewel glowing in the darkness.
The acting throughout is stunning. Those who were touched by Mackenzie Crook’s inarticulate despair onstage in Jerusalem will adore his performance here, in which he deploys his headlamp eyes and hangdog demeanour to great comic effect in his portrayal of a chronically underemployed man who struggles to cope with stronger personalities, such as his highly capable teacher girlfriend Becky (Diana Rigg’s daughter Rachael Stirling, uncannily like her mother). Andy wrestles with the idea that there may be other, bigger lives out there and other ways than Essex, one of which is Becky’s longed-for VSO year in Botswana —which terrifies Andy, only just recovered from the considerable shock of new fatherhood. Toby Jones has a terrific line in suppressed sadness and outward cheerfulness as Lance, who compensates for his disappointments by informing himself on many different subjects and telling Andy all about them. The mad local landowner is played by David Sterne, channelling Terry-Thomas hilariously, and Gerard Horan delivers an inspired satire of cack-handed leadership as Terry, retired policeman and head of the tiny DMDC: at one point, keen to emphasise the club’s inclusivity, he points out to the members that it’s got an Asian and two lesbians, at which point these individuals hunker down, affronted at having been turned into check-boxes. He also fails to prevent the truly horrendous ideas suggested by his quirky wife Sheila (Sophie Thompson) from creating uproar in the club; the nude calendar suggestion nearly leads to a coup. Daniel Donskoy plays a German hipster called Peter (wearing an absurdly small straw hat), who suddenly appears on the scene ostensibly to find out where his grandfather’s plane was shot down during World War II, but whose bouncy chirpiness telegraphs that he is in fact Up To Something —most likely No Good. (And what spookily Bad Thing has he got in his wallet?) However, he does succeed in diverting the attention of pretty archaeology student Sophie (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), previously a wistful second thought for the overwhelmed Andy.
The show ultimately turns out to have a surprisingly profound theme: lonely men and their uncertain appeals for the affections of the women in their lives. When Lance’s long-lost daughter finally returns, the intensity of his love initially frightens her away, while Andy teeters a hair’s breadth from losing Becky and the baby. The two men help each other with these problems in subtle and direct ways as they potter about on the periphery with their metal detectors, and both storylines are eventually resolved to the happiness of all concerned. The Detectorists is the best thing going for jaded and weary spirits, which explains why it is adored by so many people around the beleaguered globe.--Isabel Taylor
