Rachael Stirling

Detectorists Christmas special review

The prospect of a new mini-series, spread over three weeks, would have been a real splash of festive joy. Instead, the whole story was condensed into a single 75-minute special, which was simply too much of a good thing.

Detectorists Christmas Special review

This special isn't quite as perfect as the original, but revisiting Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones's precious sitcom is pure pleasure. It beats all other yuletide TV hands down.

Detectorists Christmas special review

Detectorists is a TV treasure as priceless as anything Andy and Lance could ever dig up in the fields around Danebury.

Detectorists: a bonafide heartwarming joy

Each short episode of this charming series about a bumbling small-town metal-detecting club is a perfectly calibrated good mood.

From the most underwhelming of scenarios, Mackenzie Crook has weaved something glorious with the Detectorists. Lance (Toby Jones) and Andy (Crook, who writes and directs) lead quiet, for the most part disappointed, Middle English lives that are the quintessence of the humdrum. Their time detecting in the gentle landscapes around the suggestively-titled town of Danebury is not only a beautifully observed model of male friendship (as so often, conducted through gadgets), but, even more remarkably for a sitcom, a meditation about our place in history, through the discoveries made while detecting, and the cycle of the seasons. It's like a distillation of an early Thomas Hardy novel. And you can't say that about TOWIE. Not only are Jones and Crook both excellent, but the project is also assisted by a superb supporting cast, including a mother-and-daughter appearance from Rachael Stirling and Diana Rigg. Crook has called it a day after three series: he's mined the concept thoroughly now, before having to scrape the bottom. What on earth will he do next?

It seems this is to be the final series of Mackenzie Crook's gentle, delicate metal-detection bromance Detectorists (BBC Four, 8 November, 10pm) and though I've never found it unmissable exactly, I mourn its impending departure. Being at times more of a reverie than a sitcom, it is like nothing else on television, for all that its subject - the inability of men to talk to one another, the various ways they get around the problem - is an old one.

If it is sweetly funny, it's also full of pathos, its characters never quite getting what they want, or need. And where else are you going to hear people using expressions like "purse spill"? (In the world of the metal detectorists, this is what you call a hoard that comprises only a couple of pathetic coins.)

Andy (Crook) doesn't like his new job as an archaeologist, and Lance (Toby Jones) is walking on eggshells now his daughter has moved back in. These problems, however, are as nothing compared to the news that a planned solar farm may threaten their favourite detecting spot. Will they be able to stop it? Fans will hope that as the clock ticks, they will make a discovery that will both vanquish the developers and provide Andy and the long-suffering Becky (Rachael Stirling) with enough cash to buy themselves a home. But my guess is that Crook is too much of a realist for happy endings. Don't think Sutton Hoo; think more rusty scaffolding clamps.

Detectorists series 3 review

For, as so much of this delightful series, while it seems like nothing much is happening, there's such a lot beneath the surface, hidden from view. What a perfect metaphor metal detecting turns out to be.

Detectorists, BBC4, review

Metalhead comedy full of tender moments.