Schwanebeck, Wieland (2019):

"A Field That Is Forever England: Nostalgic Revisionismin Detectorists (2014-2017)." Community, Seriality,and the State of the Nation: British and Irish TelevisionSeries in the 21st Century. Eds. Lusin, Caroline;Haekel, Ralf. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.99 - 117. Mannheimer Beiträge zur Literatur- undKulturwissenschaft 83.Sammelbandbeitrag / Article in Anthology

Veröffentlichte Version / published version

http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?fidaac-11858/726

Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use:Mit der Verwendung dieses Dokuments erkennen Sie dieNutzungsbedingungen an.

By using this particular document, you accept the terms of usestated above.

1 Sex Lives of the Potato Men holds a 0 % approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and isregularly featured on lists compiling the worst films of all time. I.Q. Hunter ac‐knowledges that the film is affiliated with the kind of crude sex farce that is oftenseen as “the quintessence of bad British cinema” (154), but he also argues for thefilm’s overlooked virtues as a melancholy portrayal of the crisis-ridden workingclass (ibid. 165-7).

A Field That Is Forever England:Nostalgic Revisionism in Detectorists (2014-2017)

Wieland Schwanebeck

1. Introduction

Detectorists (2014-2017) was the first TV series helmed by writer/directorMackenzie Crook, and ran for three series, as well as a Christmas special, onBBC Four. Aside from a writing stint on the controversial animated showPopetown (2005), Crook had mainly been known as a supporting player onvarious British TV shows prior to the success of Detectorists. His most mem‐orable role had certainly been his turn as deeply antisocial team leader GarethKeenan on the BBC’s ground-breaking comedy series The Office (2001-2003).While most of his co-stars on this programme quickly moved on to otherprojects – Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant co-writing and directing Ex‐tras (2005-2007), Martin Freeman conquering both the small and the big screenwith global franchises like Sherlock (2010-2017) and the Hobbit trilogy(2012-2014) – Crook’s career did not take off in quite the same way. Otherthan playing a minor role in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise(2003-2007), he seemed to be relegated to lending his idiosyncratic features tobit-parts in everything from Paul McCartney music videos (Dance Tonight,2007) to the occasional guest spot on British television. His few attempts atgenuine starring roles were met with a mixture of critical derision and dismalbox-office returns – Sex Lives of the Potato Men (2004), one of the worst-re‐viewed British screen comedies of all time, marked his personal nadir in thatrespect, garnering hostile reviews for its crude obscenities as much as for itsalleged waste of British comedy talent.1

Schwanebeck, Wieland. “A Field That Is Forever England: Nostalgic Revisionism in Detectorists (2014-2017).” Community, Seriality, and theState of the Nation: British and Irish Television Series in the 21st Century, edited by Caroline Lusin and Ralf Haekel, Narr Francke Attempto,2019, pp. 99–117.

2 In the following, references to Detectorists will be given without repeating the title.3 When trying to chat up a woman, Lance quotes Monty Python’s ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch

(Christmas Special, 00:14), Terry’s tip-toeing around the word ‘Nazi’ evokes memories of“Don’t mention the war!” in Fawlty Towers (S1/E5, 00:10), and when Andy tries to win hisgirlfriend back, he feels “like I’m in a Richard Curtis film” (S1/E5, 00:08).

4 At one point, Lance explains that “a man’s detector is like his woman. […] You don’ttouch another man’s detector” (S2/E2, 00:21). By the same token, he later fails to makeclear to his daughter Kate (Alexa Davies) whether the ‘she’ he is referring to is hisgirlfriend or his car (S3/E4, 00:20).

The success of Detectorists, then, arrived practically out of nowhere. The pro‐gramme is a deliberately understated, character-based comedy that evinced itscreator’s assured handling of tone as much as his laconic sense of humour byputting the spotlight on a group of eccentric hobbyists without ever subjectingthem to ridicule. The series revolves around the fictitious Danebury Metal De‐tecting Club (DMDC), an organisation consisting of a bunch of dedicated odd‐balls who spend their free-time (and in some cases, one suspects, all of their time)probing the fields of surrounding farmland for archaeological finds and preciousmetals. They are forever on the lookout for treasure and gold (symbolically andliterally), never discouraged by how overwhelmingly the odds are stacked againstthem or by the fact that all they ever seem to dig up is ring-pulls, buttons, oldbiscuit-wrappers, and the occasional bit of change. Much of the screen time isdedicated to what the characters themselves refer to as “finding junk and talkingbollocks” (Detectorists, S1/E5, 00:11),2 that is: the mundane activity of metal-de‐tecting and their amusing, though ultimately banal, conversations about the pre‐vious night’s TV schedule, domestic worries, and wildlife. Though some of thesevignettes indicate that Detectorists is quite aware of the generic traditions that itis embedded in (there is the occasional nod to British landmark comedies),3 theseries remains very much its own beast in terms of pace and setting. The prin‐cipal cast of characters includes Andy (played by Crook himself), a jobless ar‐chaeologist struggling to grow into the responsible pater familias his girlfriendBecky (Rachael Stirling) wishes him to be; Lance (Toby Jones), a kind-heartedforklift-driver still reeling from a divorce, who takes delight in trivia knowledgeand playing his mandolin; club president Terry (Gerard Horan), a retired policeofficer and author of the monograph Common Buttons of North West Essex; aswell as their rival detectorists, ‘Simon & Garfunkel’ (Paul Casar and Simon Far‐naby), thus nicknamed for their uncanny resemblance to the folk duo.

As this brief assessment indicates, one of the dominant themes of the showis middle-aged masculinity in crisis, and while an in-depth reading of Detectoristscertainly cannot turn a blind eye to how its male protagonists gently polish theirmetal detectors and personify them as female (S2/E2, 00:21),4 the focus of the

100 Wieland Schwanebeck

5 The show was moved up to Wednesday for its final series. See Hogan for an account ofits ratings.

following analysis will be a different one. I will contextualise the show withina tradition of British comedy that is associated with the perspective of the re‐silient underdog, and I will show how its deliberately small-scale perspectiveand its paradoxical attitude towards history merge into a highly nostalgic por‐trayal of communal spirit in the face of modernisation.

2. Humbled by History

In spite of its stellar reviews, Detectorists remained relegated to its Thursdaynight, 10 p. m. slot on BBC Four for most of its run,5 though this has arguablycontributed a lot to its niche appeal, thus resonating with the show’s themes.According to Crook himself, people who found the show ‘by accident’ felt “likethey’ve discovered something for themselves and being sort of special andholding it close to their hearts” (qtd. in Lloyd). Like the archaeological gems thatAndy and Lance dream of unearthing, Detectorists seems to have arrived fromanother era. Aimed firmly at a middle-aged audience (with hardly any characterlikely to appeal to a young demographic), the show affords few of the moreoutrageous conceits or stylistic peculiarities that the more daring brand ofBritish TV comedy has become associated with in recent years. There is nothingdeliberately edgy or cringeworthy about its humour, even though the dramatispersonae is brimming with socially awkward misfits and the setting coincideswith that of grotesque, black-humoured, and borderline-dystopian shows likeThe League of Gentlemen (1999-2002, 2017). As a result, Detectorists would seemrather out of place amongst some of the most prominent and critically acclaimedBritish comedy exports of the last decade, like Psychoville (2009-2011), Hunderby(2012-2015), Inside No. 9 (2014-), or Fleabag (2016-).

Unlike any of these distinctly dark comedies, it cultivates a love for the seem‐ingly inconspicuous and mundane, finding poetry in close-ups of flora and fauna,and this strategy also extends to the casting. The two main characters are playedby series-runner Crook and by Toby Jones, one of the most reliable supportingactors in British film and television: Jones’ extensive filmography has taken ineverything from independent features to Hollywood blockbusters like the HarryPotter series (where he voiced Dobby the Elf in two films, 2002-2010) or TheHunger Games (2012-2015), and while he has played the occasional lead (for in‐stance, as the meek sound engineer in Peter Strickland’s mesmerising BerberianSound Studio [2012]), most of his signature roles have been morally ambiguous,

101Detectorists (2014-2017)

Fig. 1: Putting man in his place (S1/E1, 00:00).

villainous scene-stealers like the gangster Ratchett on ITV’s adaptation of Murderon the Orient Express (2010), the shady secret service boss in Tinker Tailor SoldierSpy (2011), or Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis Culverton Smith in Sherlock (2017). De‐tectorists ‘promotes’ Jones to leading-man status and supplements his dominantscreen persona by emphasising his humanity and warmth; another example ofhow the show pushes its trademark qualities, suggesting to the viewer that it isalways worth taking a second look, and that there is more to the surface thanmeets the eye. The critics were certainly taken with this agenda: not only didDetectorists receive praise for its “quietly joyous celebration” of “the Englishcountryside” (Lewis) and its “sparse, droll, understated and believable” qualities(Wollaston), the show also won a BAFTA for Best Scripted Comedy (2015), whileJones took one home for Best Comedy Performance (2018).

Indeed, the show’s resounding love for the mundane coincides with itsnot-so-subtle pride in the virtues of the quirky, insular community, a theme Ishall be developing throughout the remainder of this chapter. It is not a coinci‐dence that many of the jokes in Detectorists result from a comic strategy thathas often been put forward as a quintessential feature of British humour: ba‐thos, that is, “the puncturing intrusion of reality that floors lofty aspirations”(Stott 55). This is most evident in the way the show, while never resorting tocruelty, constantly mines humour from belittlement, shooting the charactersfrom bird’s-eye perspectives or reducing them to the size of ants in panoramiclong shots (see fig. 1).

102 Wieland Schwanebeck

6 The show’s catchy theme-tune makes a similar point, as singer Johnny Flynn adoptsthe viewpoint of the treasure itself, waiting for its lover/finder: “Will you search throughthe lonely earth for me, / Climb through the briar and bramble? / I’ll be your treasure /[…] / I’m waiting for you”.

Detectorists is clearly not afraid to ‘think small’, sending its protagonists on aMoby Dick-like search for a villainous magpie (S3/E3) or making them tie thefuture of the DMDC to the rather mundane question of how much is left in theclub’s coffee jar (S1/E5, 00:19). The club takes pride in exhibiting its ‘finds table’,but what the detectorists view as “irresistible nuggets of history” (S2/E1, 00:11)is just a bunch of worthless buttons and buckles for the rest of the world; Russell(Pearce Quigley) makes it into the local newspaper for having retrieved a lostwedding ring yet falls short of his Ghostbusters-fuelled ambition to drive his ownvehicle with the club logo emblazoned on it (S2/E1, 00:13), and it may not belaughable for Lance to purchase club fleeces for the DMDC, but the fact that heorders 150 of them for its seven members certainly is. “We could share ‘em”, hetimidly suggests. “21 each?” (S1/E5, 00:22) Even when the show aims for therealm of the spectacular or creates visually inventive and cinematic set-pieces(especially in the last series), it never leaves the audience in doubt that it isabsolutely content to accept the small screen as its natural habitat. In a sequencethat evokes memories of the grim coda to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conver‐sation (1974), Lance turns his flat upside down looking for a squirrel (S3/E2,00:08), while another episode features what may be the slowest car chase evercommitted to the screen (S3/E3, 00:04).

Whenever the show adapts cinematic conventions that fall outside the juris‐diction of the traditional multiple-camera sitcom, like the panoramic aerialshots, it draws attention to man’s relative insignificance, as well as to the over‐whelming force of history. Frequent use is made of the free-floating, omniscientcamera-eye, as the camera goes beyond purely character-based focalisation andpans up and down to exercise its privilege of unlimited viewpoints, very muchin the spirit of omniscient narration in 18th-century literature. Series Two is fullof such moments, as it plots Lance’s search for treasure in the tradition of clas‐sical romance, where the lovers will only come together for the climactic em‐brace.6 The series opens with a prologue set in medieval times, showing how amonk has buried the precious objects that Lance will dig up in the series finale(S2/E1, 00:00), and the camera exercises not just temporal but also spatial priv‐ileges throughout the subsequent episodes, frequently panning beneath the de‐tectorists’ feet to tease the audience and to reveal that the treasure, unbeknownstto Lance and Andy, is already within their reach (S2/E4, 00:01; S2/E3, 00:02).

103Detectorists (2014-2017)

7 In the last scene of the series, Lance summarises the magic of metal-detecting thus: “[I]tis the closest you’ll get to time travel. See, archaeologists, they gather up the facts, piecethe jigsaw together. Work out how we lived and find the buildings we lived in, but whatwe do is… it’s different. We unearth the scattered memories, mine for stories, fill in thepersonality. Detectorists. We’re time travellers.” (S3/E6, 00:25) See Murgia/Roberts/Wiseman 353-5 for a more detailed account of what motivates detectorists.

8 There is an intertextual dimension to it, too: Toby Jones, who plays Lance, has appearedas Alfred Hitchcock in a made-for-TV movie that chronicles the making of 1963’s TheBirds (The Girl, 2012).

9 If there is a fitting companion piece to Detectorists in contemporary British popular culture,it may well be Ben Wheatley’s surrealist horror film, A Field in England (2013), starring TheLeague of Gentlemen’s Reece Shearsmith. A generic hybrid set during the English Civil War,this black-and-white oddity plays almost like a prologue to Detectorists and shows that theincreasingly glorified fields of the pre-industrial world are not just the bucolic realm of theheritage industry, but that they have seen their fair share of violence and bodies buriedwithin them.

When voicing their ethos as historians and time travellers,7 Lance and Andyoften appear overwhelmed by the sheer force of history and of time passing.The first gold-dig on Farmer Bishop’s land is credited to “Old Man Adam”(S1/E2, 00:26), which underlines the biblical dimension of their pastime, andLance’s Hitchcockian musings on the conspiracy of the magpies that have ab‐ducted ‘his’ gold (S3/E4, 00:01) may be a joke,8 but they are borne out by theseries’ occasional stab at the transcendental. This is evident in what is withouta doubt the most visually stunning sequence of the whole programme: whenAndy blows into a falconer’s whistle he has dug up, a two-minute time-warpsequence literally summons the ghosts that still haunt the field (S3/E1, 00:25),which puts a metaphysical spin on what is otherwise a show thoroughly infa‐tuated with materialist culture.

By invoking the spectre of their forefathers (on whose ‘hallowed ground’ Andyand Lance tread), the show not only underlines the humbling dimension ofmetal-detecting in the face of history, but suffuses it with a thoroughly nationaldimension. In finally uniting Lance with ‘his’ gold in the euphoric climax of theseries, the show goes beyond merely celebrating rural England’s hidden treasuresand literally celebrates the nation at large. When an ecstatic Lance goes into hislong-awaited ‘gold dance’, he puts the show in touch with the kind of rituals thatF.R. Leavis (together with Denys Thompson) has described as the quintessence ofthe ‘organic community’, a thoroughly idealised version of rural England that isembodied by “[f]olk songs, folk dances, Cotswold cottages and handicraft prod‐ucts” and adjusted “to the natural environment and the rhythm of the year” (qtd. inBilan 15).9 Lance arguably has his proudest moment when his find goes on displayat the British Museum, and his own name, by being put on a plaque, becomes a

104 Wieland Schwanebeck

10 The legendary American sitcom Seinfeld (1989-1998) is often cited as the prime examplehere, its stubborn refusal to introduce epic changes coinciding with its ‘no hugging, nolearning’ policy. Tellingly, Seinfeld is one of the very few sitcoms to feature amore-or-less straightforward adaptation of an absurdist drama, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal(1978). Detectorists briefly pays homage to the show when Louise (Laura Checkley)recites “Yada, yada, yada”, a phrase very much popularised by Seinfeld.

footnote to the nation’s historiography. Like in Rupert Brooke’s famous sonnet,“The Soldier” (1914), he who touches the soil makes it “forever England” (v. 3),which may be why the show (which pokes gentle fun at the quirks of its charac‐ters) never undercuts or mocks the project of metal-detecting itself.

At the same time, though, Detectorists evokes strangely ahistoric, anonymouslandscapes that are not so much characteristic of the realist paradigm that theshow frequently references, but of the tradition of absurdism, particularly thespatio-temporal setting and character constellation of Samuel Beckett’s play,Waiting for Godot (1953).

3. Waiting for Gold

The fundamental paradox at the heart of Detectorists is that it is a programme whichcelebrates history (though be it a very select, glorified version of it) and refutes it atthe same time, having its characters put their heads (or rather, their metal detec‐tors) in the sand. Lance and Andy constantly fail to see the bigger picture: blissfullyunaware of the jet-planes flying over their heads (S1/E2, 00:21), of their partners’pregnancies (a constellation that marks them out as detectorists who are rather badat detecting), and – in one of the series’ major laugh-out-loud moments – of the factthat what they believe to be traces of a Saxon settlement is, in fact, the Google Earthwatermark (S1/E1, 00:15). Other jokes result from the fact that they are sheer ob‐livious to the passing of time: when going to a job interview, Andy puts dirt underhis fingernails in order to pretend he has experience as a worker (S2/E4, 00:13), andin the same episode Lance, who frantically tries to reconnect with his grown-updaughter, gives her all the Christmas and birthday presents he owes her in the spanof one afternoon (S2/E4, 00:23).

This ahistorical condition overlaps with the very nature of the sitcom as agenre, where life-changing events and epic developments are much rarer to befound than in soap-operas or crime drama. This is why comedy, as a genre thatis rather impervious to change, is the legitimate realm of the middle-agedman-child who is reluctant to move with the times and of the lad who refusesto grow up, and why it relies so much on “cyclical plots and regular settings”(Mills 34).10 The tension between changing nothing (that is, to give the audience

105Detectorists (2014-2017)

11 In the first series, the viewer learns that Lance has won the lottery but has no intentionof spending the money. When Andy, in the final series, desperately needs a big sum tomake a down payment for a house, the possibility of Lance lending it to him neveroccurs to anyone.

12 Not to mention the final series’ meta-reflexive quality, as the looming deadline (theclosing of the farm) coincides with the termination of the series. In the second of thefinal six episodes, Andy explains that they have “less than six weeks” left (S3/E2, 00:03).

more of what they have grown accustomed to) and producing serial narrationacross several years inevitably produces some inconsistencies: Lance’s lot‐tery-win remains curiously inconsequential,11 the character of Sophie(Aimee-Ffion Edwards) simply disappears after the second series and is nevermentioned again, and the triumphant conclusion to the first series (when theDMDC absorbs some of its rivals, the ‘Antiquisearchers’) is forgotten a year later,and the number of DMDC members does not seem to have changed. TheChristmas Special goes so far as to have Lance fight for cosmic balance by ‘cor‐recting’ his gold-find and thus to eradicate the impact of having fulfilled hislifetime’s ambition – in order to avoid bad karma, he purchases some antiquecoins and hides them in a remote field, thus making amends for his ‘theft’.

This is not to say that there is no plot to be found here; in fact, the show’sartful intersections between the archaeological story-lines and the privatesphere rank amongst its most sublime achievements. In the first series, Andyand Lance detect on the land of Farmer Bishop, who is rumoured to have killedhis wife and disposed of her body (a story-line that resonates with the domestictensions both men struggle to resolve); the second series sees the DMDC help ayoung German who is looking to reconnect with his family history by searchingfor his grandfather’s shot-down World War II plane, while at the same time,Lance and Andy navigate the responsibilities of their own expanding familytrees; and the final series is all about nesting and finding new territory: theDMDC is expelled from one of its favourite search-sites, and Lance and Andyattempt to settle down permanently with their respective families.12

However, there is a stubborn refusal to grow and, like in the classic Ealingcomedies, a spirit of resistance in the face of modernisation to all these devel‐opments, so that Detectorists occasionally comes to resemble the most plotlessof all literary traditions: the Theatre of the Absurd. The intertextual connectionis not only emphasised by the importance of waiting (as Andy and Lance spendthe bulk of their time hoping for gold yet finding nothing), but it is evident in anumber of scenes, starting with the very first exchange that passes betweenLance and Andy in the prologue to the first episode: “Anything?” – “Fuck all.”(S1/E1, 00:00) This echoes the first words spoken in Waiting for Godot, “Nothing

106 Wieland Schwanebeck

to be done” (5). Furthermore, some of Detectorists’ more desolate landscapesrecall Beckett’s sparse specifications of scenery – “A country road. A tree. Eve‐ning.” (ibid. 5) –, and the same goes for the role of the tree as a timid symbol ofhope. While Beckett’s duo derive comfort from the fact that the tree has growna few leaves towards the end of the play (ibid. 90), Andy and Lance take it uponthemselves to fight for the preservation of their beloved oak as a minor symbolof resistance against being expelled from the farm (S3/E5). Moreover, there is anear-verbatim allusion to Beckett’s oft-quoted ending. Both acts of Waiting forGodot famously conclude with an exchange between Vladimir and Estragon thatunderlines their lack of agency as well as the play’s continued discrepancy be‐tween words and actions: Following Vladimir’s suggestion, “Shall we go?”, Es‐tragon agrees, “Yes, let’s go”, only for the stage direction to clarify that “[t]heydo not move” (91). Detectorists reiterates the joke when Russell and Hugh (DivianLadwa), during a nightly excursion, stumble upon a couple having sex in theircar. Contrary to their voiced intentions (“Can we go home now?” – “Yeah.”), theyremain trapped in the headlights of the car and do not leave (S2/E3, 00:02).

Like in Theatre of the Absurd (and some of the cringe comedies that were tofollow in its footsteps), Detectorists is a show that is “[not] afraid of silence”(Sturges) – which follows logically from the way it constantly traps its charactersin the pitfalls of language, tautology, and malapropisms. While watching hisex-wife’s New Age shop for her, Lance assures a customer that “the moonstoneputs you in touch with the moon” and, in an impromptu speech of almostShakespearean buffoonery, that “a spirit stick” is there to “hit spirits with” (S1/E5, 00:05). In the same episode, he has trouble convincing Sophie of his lot‐tery-win because she is under the impression that he is speaking in metaphors(S1/E5, 00:14). Consequently, the jokes do not derive from the kind ofhyper-smart, witty banter that is frequently associated with the modern sitcom,but from the characters’ rather inadvertent exhibitions of wit. When giving Andysome relationship advice, Lance tells him, “you’re on thin ice. Could find your‐self in some hot water.” (S1/E4, 00:05)

As two simultaneously dim-witted and rather philosophical keepers of theland and soil, Andy and Lance occasionally resemble the English stage’s originalexistentialists: the two gravediggers in Hamlet (c. 1602), whose corporeal needsand crude jokes both undercut and amplify their memento mori wisdom. Wherethe gravediggers’ witty riddles teach Hamlet a valuable lesson about the volatilenature of human existence (as illustrated by his famous monologue about thegreat Alexander, whose “noble dust” is now only fit enough to “stop abeer-barrel”, Hamlet 5.1.193-201), Andy and Lance frequently discuss the occa‐sionally bizarre demises of their off-screen acquaintances. On hearing that “old

107Detectorists (2014-2017)

13 This comment can be heard on “Welcome to the Clubhouse”, a short documentary fea‐tured on the DVD of the show’s final series.

Rod McLynn” has perished in a vat of boiling soup, Andy is mainly interestedin what flavour the soup was (S2/E4, 00:25), a remark that could have comestraight from a Shakespearean jester, whose bodily needs will always thwart hisphilosophical ambitions.

Detectorists does not flash these literary credentials, as it firmly rejects anyovert celebration of highbrow culture, even though the image of Andy tumblinginto his mother-in-law’s dustbin (S1/E5, 00:10) evokes another Beckett play,Endgame (1957), and Crook’s own assessment that the final series’ storylineresembles that “of the previous two series in that not much happens”13 appearsto paraphrase Vivian Mercier’s famous quip on Beckett’s play as one “in whichnothing happens – twice” (qtd. in Calderwood 34). But where Waiting for Godotonly offers a fragile sense of communality in its supplementary pairings (Vla‐dimir/Estragon and Pozzo/Lucky), Detectorists opts for a triumphant conclusionand posits a rather idealised view of community – and Englishness.

4. Join the Club

The intertextual shadow of the gravediggers is not the only Shakespearean el‐ement in Detectorists; in fact, the whole series may be an extended riff on thenotion of the ‘Green World’, a concept that goes back to Northrop Frye. Ac‐cording to Frye, Shakespeare’s plays often feature settings where the fairiesweave their magic: idyllic, rural spaces, like the Forest of Arden in As You LikeIt (c. 1599) or the woods in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1596), detached fromthe regular confines of social decorum and hierarchy, where anarchy is brieflyallowed, where summer symbolically prevails over winter, and where the pro‐tagonists are allowed a kind of sabbatical to prepare for fertile endings thatcoincide with a return to the state of normalcy, to marriage vows and a resto‐ration of order (see Frye 182). Detectorists, right to its final episode, firmly refusesto shatter its bucolic realm, and its climax is an unabashed triumph of all thevirtues commonly associated with the Green World: “contemplation instead ofaction, the happy harmonies of music and love instead of the metallic clash ofarms and the discordances of conspiracy” (Laroque 193), even though here, the‘happy harmonies’ do, ironically, include the metallic clanging that is music tothe aspiring detectorist’s ear. Throughout all three series, metal-detecting re‐mains firmly tied to a spirit of resistance against ‘going with the times’, againstbowing to the dictate of corporations (who want to install solar panels on the

108 Wieland Schwanebeck

14 Prior to the 1996 Treasure Act, treasure found by metal-detectorists automatically be‐came property of the Crown. This led to a number of illegal sales, which contributed tothe somewhat unfair stigmatisation of all detectorists as greedy (see Murgia/Roberts/Wiseman 353-4).

fields of Danebury) and profitability – a very benign view that goes firmlyagainst the stigmatisation of detectorists as mere treasure-hunters.14 Lance ide‐alises the past, as is illustrated by his car fetish and his love for 1970s glamouricon Linda Lusardi (who cameos in a dream sequence, S3/E3, 00:01), to an extentthat he even despises TV nostalgia conventions because they “aren’t what theyused to be” (S2/E1, 00:26). This is, in itself, not new: the BBC has always takenpride in its promotion of clean, middle- and upper-middle-class entertainment(see Mills 52), and nostalgia has played a key role in that respect. In a legendarycharter, Tom Sloan, the BBC’s Head of Light Entertainment in the 1960s, iden‐tifies the elusive quality of ‘flair’ as a kind of magic ingredient to set off goodand wholesome entertainment from the rest of the competition, and wheneverthis quality is invoked in debates surrounding British TV programming, accu‐sations of an inherent conservatism of British sitcoms are never far off (seeKamm/Neumann 11-4).

In Detectorists (which its creator has described as “the sitcom that ThomasHardy would have written”, qtd. in Lewis), some of that spirit translates intoclichéd imagery of a bucolic, pre-industrialised England – nowhere more so thanin the final series, when Andy and Becky make a successful bid for their dreamcottage in the woods, a place that Andy plans to retire to in order to be “afull-time hobbyist” (S3/E5, 00:16). There is little else he can do, being hopelesslylost for the real world, an idealist who finds himself frequently at odds withprospective employers. Andy substitutes water for weed-killer in order to sparethe vegetation he is supposed to destroy (S3/E4, 00:07), and he quits his job asan archaeologist when the company’s interests clash with his ethos as a pre‐server of history (S3/E3, 00:10). Needless to say, the show is wholly supportiveof his moral integrity, and this sympathy for the underdog resonates with someof the most cherished traditions of British comedy, including the modernworking-class comedy of the post-Thatcherist era, but especially the Ealingparadigm (see Schwanebeck 105-7): films like Passport to Pimlico (1949) orWhisky Galore! (1949), where the little man scores symbolic victories over au‐thoritarian bullies by practising a “relatively gentle” form of “comic disruptionand disorder” (O’Sullivan 71).

Like the fondly remembered Ealing comedies, Detectorists celebrates a smallgroup of eccentrics who resist any pressure to ‘move with the times’, and whofirmly defend their small territory of outdated Englishness in the face of mod‐

109Detectorists (2014-2017)

15 Mark Gatiss, one of the creators of The League of Gentlemen, drew this analogy himself.When the League’s revival was announced, Gatiss pointed out that “we have become alocal country for local people and I wonder if there is something Brexity in us that wecan do” (qtd. in Jackson).

16 Tim O’Sullivan points out that there is a frequently unacknowledged darker side to theEaling comedies, too. He mentions “stories of maverick and dangerous eccentricity”like Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), where the quirky underdog resorts to cold-bloodedmurder to secure his interests (71).

ernisation, thus presenting the viewer with “a picture of an England lost to time”(Barnett). This deeply nostalgic spirit for an allegedly ‘better’, glorified Englandof the past, which resonates with the series’ investment in the treasures hiddenin England’s soil, has problematic aspects to it, of course, particularly in the ageof Brexit. While most of the show’s critics took comfort in the fact that nothingcould be “more quintessentially of these isles” than “the silhouette of a lonefigure sweeping a metal detector back and forth in contemplative solitude insome remote English field” (ibid.), there can be no doubt that Detectorists har‐bours a slightly more complex agenda underneath its good-humoured façade.

It is not a coincidence that the years leading up to the Brexit vote saw a newwave of programmes in which the notion of a firmly white, pre-industrial ‘MerryEngland’ comes under increasing scrutiny and is revealed to be an invention ofthe heritage industry and to hide deeply regressive, horrific fantasies of in‐breeding and exclusion. No wonder that The League of Gentlemen returned froma 15-year hiatus as soon as the United Kingdom had voted ‘out’, for its mostwell-known catchphrase (“Are you local?”) had suddenly acquired a dimensionthat not even its creators could have foreseen back in the 1990s.15 Of course, theLeague’s fictitious setting of Royston Vasey was already in itself a throwback toa staple of British horror fiction: the seemingly kind-hearted, bucolic small-towncommunity whose inhabitants harbour horrifying secrets, murderous inten‐tions, pagan cults, and cannibalistic urges. This bleak vision of idiosyncraticinsular communities is the mean-spirited Other to Ealing’s vigorous opti‐mism;16 it permeates classic British horror films like The Village of the Damned(1960) or The Wicker Man (1973), and it returned with a vengeance in the newmillennium, in films and TV series like Hot Fuzz (2007), Psychoville, Hunderby,and, to a degree, Broadchurch (2013-2017).

In Detectorists, the idea of the devouring, predatory community is merelyalluded to as a throwaway joke – while trying to make a new prospective DMDCmember feel at home, Sheila (Sophie Thompson) half-jokingly assures him that“you’ve not joined a cult” (S2/E1, 00:17), but the ensuing forced laughter andawkward silence indicates that she may have touched a sore spot. The show’sparatextual apparatus (including its promotion materials, interviews, or DVD

110 Wieland Schwanebeck

Fig. 2: Please keep out (S2/E2, 00:15).

extras) makes a point of stressing how much of a labour of love and a ‘familyaffair’ the series is, going so far as to cast Rachael Sterling’s real-life mother,British screen icon Diana Rigg, as her on-screen mom, but at the same time, thissuggests that the detectorists (both on- and off-screen) are very much contentto remain amongst themselves; a narrative of self-sufficient insularity that madethe show resonate with current political discussions in the run-up to the refer‐endum. As the DMDC’s president, Terry constantly makes it a priority for themto branch out and to acquire new members, but his fellow detectorists are ratherreluctant to follow suit. One of the show’s visual leitmotifs consists of placingthe characters in vast surroundings, particularly the DMDC’s clubhouse, whichcould easily accommodate 100 people but never contains more than ten. Whenintruders come knocking, they are ogled suspiciously (see fig. 2), and much ofthe club-time is dedicated to denigrating the competition, “a wretched hive ofscum and villainy” according to Andy (S1/E3, 00:15). Throughout the series, itis shared contempt for the Antiquisearchers that binds the club together, andthe cruel humour which the two groups level at each other underlines that everysuccessful process of forming a community and of including others implies anexclusion at the same time, for there is no such thing as an ‘us’ that would notgo at the expense of a denigrated and stigmatised ‘them’.

111Detectorists (2014-2017)

17 Following Savile’s death in 2011, he was revealed to have been one of the worst sex of‐fenders in British history, having molested hundreds of children throughout his careerwhile enjoying the protection of the BBC. The inclusion of the scene in a BBC Four sitcommay be viewed as a belated attempt to make amends on behalf of the network.

Occasionally, Detectorists puts the finger where it hurts, and draws the viewer’sattention to how fictional its glorified view of the past really is, and how fragileits sense of communality. In one of the most melancholic vignettes of the wholeseries, Andy digs up a medal saying “Jim fixed it for me” (S1/E3, 00:01), a re‐minder of Jim’ll Fix It (1975-1994), one of the most beloved children’s pro‐grammes in British TV history. But Andy’s pained expression speaks volumes, andwe can assume that his own memories of having watched the show while growingup are now forever tainted by the subsequent revelations about the show’s host,Jimmy Savile.17 In another meta-reflexive scene, the DMDC questions its own ideaof inclusivity: Terry proudly explains that they have “two lesbians and an Asianamongst their ranks”, and when his wife helpfully points out that “Louise andVarde are also women” and “not just lesbians”, he takes this as affirmation: “Wegot all the minorities covered.” (S2/E3, 00:13) Detectorists milks this very limitedunderstanding of inclusivity for numerous laughs: as a running gag, Varde (OrionBen) remains silent to viewers of the show, and when she attempts to speak, herfellow detectorists chastise her for monopolising the conversation (S3/E4, 00:11);Hugh, on the other hand, whom Terry counts as the club’s token Asian member,is constantly patronised and assumed to be a teenager.

A similar kind of ambiguity permeates the show’s humour, which is generallyon the “warm, affectionate” side (Lewis) and seems particularly intent on notoffending anyone. There are no obscenities here, and even the occasional bitsof innuendo are all in good humour. When the club-members erupt into a gig‐gling fit at Terry’s inadvertent use of lewd imagery (during his customary speechon metal-detecting, he lectures them on “moist cracks” and “deeper penetration”of the soil, S3/E1, 00:15), the aim is neither to deliver a full-scale attack on hisauthority nor to make a desperate bid for another target audience. Yet whileDetectorists never goes for the ‘wink-wink nudge-nudge’ school of smutty hu‐mour nor for the kind of “mocking of the vulnerable” that is frequently associ‐ated with modern-day sitcoms, where the jokes rest on racist or sexist stereo‐types (Mills 79), it is not free of denigration. There is an almost paradigmaticsequence to drive home the point in the second episode of the third and finalseries, where meetings of the two rival detectorist groups are intercut with oneanother. At the DMDC clubhouse, Lance has just finished telling a joke, and theyall erupt into laughter, pointing fingers at one another as a token of sharedrecognition (‘I laugh with you, I see you.’). This kind of laughter is very much a

112 Wieland Schwanebeck

Fig. 3: Laughing-with and laughing-at (S3/E2, 00:22).

social event, one that builds a ‘community of laughter’ out of “shared worlds,shared codes, and shared values” (Reichl/Stein 13). Cut to the parallel meetingof the Antiquisearchers, where everyone is having a laugh at one of their mem‐bers who appears to have made a fool of himself (see fig. 3). Here, too, fingersare pointed, but this time in order to facilitate someone’s temporary exclusionfrom the group (‘I laugh at you – look at you!’). On the surface, the scene seemsto suggest that there is a clear-cut demarcation line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’

113Detectorists (2014-2017)

laughter, an idea firmly supported by the mise-en-scène, which contrasts thebrightly-lit DMDC clubhouse (Union Jack visible in the background) with theconspiratorial atmosphere of the back room where the Antiquisearchers meet.Yet viewed in context of the series, one cannot help but notice that laughteralways cuts both ways, working “as a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion, ofvalorization on the one hand and of denigration on the other” (Horlacher 25),for the DMDC’s inclusive laughter (much like their club ethos) rests on theunspoken exclusion of those who have not joined the club, and who are deniedaccess to the clubhouse. Both laughing-at and laughing-with require an “implicitacceptance of and identification with the norm”, which makes any kind oflaughter “simultaneously criticism and affirmation” (ibid. 27, 35).

5. Conclusion

Detectorists leaves its most exuberant celebration of communality for the grandfinale, when the DMDC comes together one last time on the land that is aboutto be taken from them. The final episode is an odd proposition: on the one hand,it indulges in the kind of frantic tying-up of plotlines that is characteristic of thefinal act in a comedy (Shakespearean or otherwise), but on the other hand, itdoes so at a very gentle, almost pre-modern pace that never disrupts its pastoralspirit of idealised Englishness, and with a renewed sense of reconciliation. Thistime, Lance and Andy even invite the competition to join them, having learnedthat ‘Simon and Garfunkel’ and their fellow Antiquisearchers (who, at this stage,go by the name of ‘Terra Firma’) may not be so different from them, and that ametal detector is a metal detector, after all.

The ending tries to have its cake and eat it, singing the praises of the GreenWorld in a near-wordless montage, while at the same time gently poking itscharacters into moving on: marriage proposals are made, couples prepare fornew living situations, friendships are formed, and the old certainties of ‘us’ vs.‘them’ appear to vanish as former rivals are welcomed to join the ranks of theclub. Show-runner Mackenzie Crook lets his characters down gently, sparingthe viewers the sight of what may be lurking outside the Green World. As hismerry treasure-seekers come together to erect a gazebo and to share a glass ofSheila’s disastrous lemonade, Crook treats his audience to a contemplativemontage: metal detectors are raised one final time against the heavens, in agesture that serves simultaneously to invoke group solidarity and to also defyauthority (see fig. 4). Family members (mostly female) seem content to watch,looking after the children and patiently reading books, thus acknowledgingLeavis’ point that literature is the only way to retrieve the organic community,

114 Wieland Schwanebeck

Fig. 4: A merry band of brothers (S3/E6, 00:13).

while the largely homosocial group of detectorists goes about its business asthough they were ploughing the fields (S3/E6, 00:20). If Crook’s original aim inmaking the show was to write “a love song to the English countryside” (qtd. inLloyd), then this is the bit where he treats his listeners to a final encore of thechorus.

Needless to say, the show has, at this point, obliterated most of the traces ofits occasional flirt with the subversive and has fully aligned itself with the kindof conservatism that some see as an in-built structural necessity of comedy –not just of the Ealing variety, which was so firmly associated with the “rear-viewmirror” of misrecognition and misremembering in postwar Britain (O’Sullivan67). However, it would be unfair to suggest that Detectorists is the programmeof choice for all nostalgic Brexiteers, particularly because, by virtue of being acomedy show, it leans more strongly towards the ambiguous qualities of ironyand remains firmly tongue-in-cheek about many of the values that its characters(not to mention its mise-en-scène) embrace. Chances are that, when confrontedwith the ‘in’ or ‘out’ question of the referendum, Andy and Lance would haveresponded with a resounding “Don’t care”, before grabbing their metal detectorsand seeking out another field in England.

115Detectorists (2014-2017)

Bibliography

Primary SourcesBeckett, Samuel. Waiting for Godot. London: faber & faber, 2010 [1953].Brooke, Rupert. “The Soldier.” The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tra‐

dition in English. Ed. Phillis Levin. London: Penguin, 2001 [1914]. 167.Detectorists. Series 1-3. Written and directed by Mackenzie Crook. BBC Four, 2014-2017.Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Eds. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor. London: Cengage

Learning, 2006 [c. 1602] (The Arden Shakespeare).

Secondary SourcesBarnett, David. “Real-Life Detectorists: The Metal Hunters Who Are Digging up a

Treasure Trove of British History.” The Independent. 16 November 2017. www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/detectorists-season-3-buried-treasure-trove-hoxne-hoard-metal-detector-detecting-artefacts-roman-a8055786.html. Accessed on 17 Jan‐uary 2018.

Bilan, R.P. The Literary Criticism of F.R. Leavis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979.Calderwood, James L. “Ways of Waiting in Waiting for Godot.” ‘Waiting for Godot’ and

‘Endgame’: Contemporary Critical Essays. Ed. Steven Connor. Houndmills: Macmillan,1992. 29-43.

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. London: Penguin, 1990 [1957].Hogan, Michael. “Detectorists Returns to Unearth More Comic Gold.” The Telegraph. 8

November 2017. www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2017/11/08/detectorists-returns-unearth-comic-gold-review/. Accessed on 17 January 2018.

Horlacher, Stefan. “A Short Introduction to Theories of Humour, the Comic, andLaughter.” Gender and Laughter: Comic Affirmation and Subversion in Traditional andModern Media. Eds. Gaby Pailer et al. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. 17-47.

Hunter, I.Q. “From Window Cleaner to Potato Man: Confessions of a Working-ClassStereotype.” British Comedy Cinema. Eds. I.Q. Hunter and Laraine Porter. London, NewYork: Routledge, 2012. 154-70.

Jackson, Jasper. “Mark Gatiss: League of Gentlemen Star Hints at ‘Brexity’ Return to TV.”The Guardian. 13 October 2016. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/oct/12/league-of-gentlemen-mark-gatiss-return-tv-bbc. Accessed on 17 January 2018.

Kamm, Jürgen, and Birgit Neumann. “Introduction: The Aesthetics and Politics of BritishTV Comedy.” British TV Comedies: Cultural Concepts, Contexts and Controversies. Eds.Jürgen Kamm and Birgit Neumann. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 1-20.

Laroque, François. Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment andthe Professional Stage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.

116 Wieland Schwanebeck

Lewis, Tim. “Mackenzie Crook: ‘We Aspire to Be the Sitcom Thomas Hardy Would HaveWritten’.” The Guardian. 25 October 2015. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/oct/25/mackenzie-crook-the-detectorists-new-series. Accessed on 17 January 2018.

Lloyd, Robert. “British Detectorists on Acorn TV Uncovers a Comedy Treasure.” Los An‐geles Times. 25 August 2015. www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-detectorists-interview-20150824-column.html. Accessed on 17 January 2018.

Mills, Brett. The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2009.Murgia, Alessia, Benjamin W. Roberts, and Rob Wiseman. “What Have Metal-Detecto‐

rists Ever Done for Us? Discovering Bronze Age Gold in England and Wales.” Arch‐äologisches Korrespondenzblatt 44.3 (2014): 353-67.

O’Sullivan, Tim. “Ealing Comedies 1947-57: ‘The Bizarre British, Faced with AnotherPerfectly Extraordinary Situation.’” British Comedy Cinema. Eds. I.Q. Hunter and Lar‐aine Porter. London, New York: Routledge, 2012. 66-76.

Reichl, Susanne and Mark Stein. “Introduction.” Cheeky Fictions: Laughter and the Post‐colonial. Eds. Susanne Reichl and Mark Stein. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. 1-22.

Schwanebeck, Wieland. “The More, the Merrier? British Comedy and the Community ofLaughter.” Anglistik 26.1 (2015): 103-13.

Stott, Andrew. Comedy. New York, London: Routledge, 2005.Sturges, Fiona. “Detectorists: A Rich Portrait of Unremarkable Lives Gone Slightly Awry.”

The Guardian. 9 December 2017. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/dec/09/detectorists-rich-portrait-unremarkable-lives-gone-slightly-awry-mackenzie-crook.Accessed on 17 January 2018.

Wollaston, Sam. “Detectorists Review: More Tender Comedy about Men, Middle Age andMetal-Detecting.” The Guardian. 9 November 2017. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/nov/09/detectorists-review-third-series-tender-comedy-men-middle-age-metal-detecting. Accessed on 17 January 2018.

117Detectorists (2014-2017)