The Detectorists - Poignant and Sweet

 

At first I thought this was another British comedy about unlovely people of the post-modernist "life sucks and then you die" genre. Toby Jones, after all, plays a lot of unsavory characters. But pretty quickly I came to really like the two main characters -Mackenzie Crook (from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) as Andy and Toby Jones (from Sherlock) as Lance. Neither is a pretty person. They play oddball friends scouring the English countryside for treasure with metal detectors. Diana Rigg (Mrs. Peel from the Avengers) also appears as Veroinica in this quirky little series which is fun. 

A friend recommended this series to me and I respect her opinion on things like this. The series won a BAFTA Award. The show follows a group of "detectorists", amateur archaeologists searching for and finding military buttons, Roman coins and odd bits of old appliances. The six episodes I watched took us through their search for a buried Roman treasure that the Jones character is convinced is somewhere in the field.

There are rivals for the search grounds and all sorts of problems come up that you'd not expect would plague a bunch of guys who spend their weekends running metal detectors up and down an open field. The story, like all good stories, lures you in softly and holds you to the end. I found it on Amazon's Britbox which I get with my Amazon Prime subscription (which with the free shipping and all the free movies and TV shows is well worth the annual bill). If you're looking for a gentle diversion for a Sunday afternoon, I recommend this funny little series.

Stars:  Mackenzie Crook, Toby Jones, Pearce Quigley, Diana Rigg