By James Wallace Harris, Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Normally I watch new TV shows with my friends as a reason to get together socially. For a while now, I don’t have the patience to watch a lot of TV by myself. But last night my friend Mike told me about a series he’s watched three times already: Detectorists. I watched by myself the first six 30-minute episodes before going to bed at 12:32am. I was hooked. So far this charming British TV show has racked up 13 total episodes. It’s quite binge worthy, but it won’t be a long one. The show is about two English guys, Andy and Lance, who love to search for buried treasure with their metal detectors. Mostly they find old nails, low value coins, beer can flip tabs, and Matchbox cars. They hope to find gold from an ancient Saxon burial. Andy and Lance belong to Danebury Metal Detecting Club (DMDC), along with six other eccentric endearing oddballs. Their rival club is even stranger.
The show is about metal detecting, but not excessively so – just enough to get me to price metal detectors on Amazon, but maybe not enough to turn me into a detectorist. I love shows about quirky sub-cultures, and this show is a doozy. It’s also beautiful, funny, endearing, and quite observant about ordinary people and their lives. The show also makes me want to move to rural England.
You can catch Detectorists on Netflix. Here’s a trailer. I thought I just let y’all know, at least my TV addict friends who are looking for another show to shoot up – especially one without gun porn. Warning, they do swear though. Not much, not as much as the women in my life. Another reason to love this show – the characters are ordinary looking, even homely, and definitely not CGI/surgically engineered beauty clones. This might be odd for me to say, but shows that promote gun lust and absurdly beautiful characters have jump the shark for me.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
thanks plan to start watching tonight…just my type of show…
thanks
Love this show and thought it might be interesting to point out that it’s from the mind of Mackenzie Crook who people might recognise from the Pirates movies. He was in the first three and was offered a part in the 4th as well but turned it down to make this rather quiet little sit com. And I’m glad he did.
Mike also told me he played in the English version of The Office.
He did thought I confess I haven’t watched it. In fact though he’s been around a bit over here the only thing I recognised him from before this was the pirates movies and “3 and out” a quirky rom com ish type movie about suicide which he was great in with Colm Meany who is always great.
The English version of The Office is brilliant in its melancholy. And, Mackenzie Crook shines as the awkward creep. Brilliant television.
The Detectorists is making its way to my mailbox in the next week, looking forward to it.
A wonderful show. I love its understated British humor. I have watched the first season twice since I discovered it on Netflix last fall and watched the second season as soon as it became available. I haven’t seen the Pirates movies, and must admit that I wondered how does anyone find an actor who looks like such a sad sack like “Andy” only to discover that he writes and directs the show. (And writes books too.) Amazing fellow.