Toby Jones (I)

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?

I'm relieved to recall I whacked Detectorists on to last week's "10 best" of 2017 TV, so needn't convince you of what a beautiful respite from the rest of the year it has been: its lack of judgmentalism, its gentle tolerance of human frailty, its being gallantly unafraid of silence, at spiritual poles to febrile Twitter spats, to endless virtue signalling and 24-hour offence-taking. The last-ever series (we're told) ended with the closest it could ever come to "villains", the pitifully pompous "Simon and Garfunkel" (last season, in an inspired little twist, they had to give their real names to police: Peters and Lee) being welcomed into the arms of the Danebury Metal Detecting Club, not without a few grateful tears on behalf of Garfunkel, the splendid Simon Farnaby. Andy (Mackenzie Crook) and Lance (Toby Jones) didn't, quite, get to do the "gold dance" at the close... cleverly, the high camera simply lingered, ambiguously, on the magpie's tree, as, coin by coin, then in a rush, it began to shed its secrets on to the sward below.

The very last drone-camera shot had the boys, alerted by some sixth sense, ambling towards the tree. I'm tempted to beg for more, but begin to wonder if creator Crook isn't quite right to leave it at this: perfect, and thus unimprovable, a treasure to be simply yearned over with wry wistfulness. Pub? Yeah, go on then.

Meet the real-life Detectorists

A quarter of a century ago, the biggest Roman hoard of coins and artefacts ever discovered in Britain was uncovered by an amateur metal detectorist. David Barnett goes inside in the world of the treasure-hunting hobbyist.

Motherland / Detectorists, review

From fundraising cash to buried treasure, these sitcoms are comedy gold.

Among this week's surfeit of goodies, there was also an oasis. Not to say that Detectorists isn't great: simply that it feels like not-TV. More like lying on a sand dune in an open shirt, with a warm wind blowing your underarm hairs. Than which there are few finer feelings.

watched this first episode about three times, and couldn't for the world find anything to jot down. Nothing happens, over and over again. And yet it's a beautiful little piece of television, England gone right, with its silences, subtleties, desultory chat, lovely folk music, and Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones, who often earn fortunes in films, choosing instead to do this slice of joy about the world of metal-detecting, and I for one rise from my sofa and applaud.

I'm told that the last two significant finds of "troves" in Britain were not by archaeologists but by detectorists, and, worse, virgin detectorists: one guy bought the device at a car-boot sale or something, switched it on and instantly found a tranche of Viking gold about 14 inches under his Clark's Commandos. It is a measure of the lovely credibility of the characters that I can, as I write, picture the reactions of Lance and Andy: tag-wrestling between outraged and laconic over over-hoppy beer.

Toby Jones interview

The actor on Dragons' Den, the jazz improvisations of Brad Mehldau, the Cinema Museum, a south London bus garage, and more...

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.