A Field That Is Forever England: Nostalgic Revisionism in Detectorists
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Schwanebeck, Wieland. “A Field That Is Forever England: Nostalgic Revisionism in Detectorists (2014-2017).” Community, Seriality, and the State 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. 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/director Mackenzie Crook, and ran for three series, as well as a Christmas special, on BBC Four. Aside from a writing stint on the controversial animated show Popetown (2005), Crook had mainly been known as a supporting player on various British TV shows prior to the success of Detectorists. His most mem‐ orable role had certainly been his turn as deeply antisocial team leader Gareth Keenan 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 other projects – Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant co-writing and directing Ex‐ tras (2005-2007), Martin Freeman conquering both the small and the big screen with global franchises like Sherlock (2010-2017) and the Hobbit trilogy (2012-2014) – Crook’s career did not take off in quite the same way. Other than playing a minor role in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (2003-2007), he seemed to be relegated to lending his idiosyncratic features to bit-parts in everything from Paul McCartney music videos (Dance Tonight, 2007) to the occasional guest spot on British television. His few attempts at genuine starring roles were met with a mixture of critical derision and dismal box-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 that respect, garnering hostile reviews for its crude obscenities as much as for its alleged waste of British comedy talent.1 1 Sex Lives of the Potato Men holds a 0 % approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is regularly 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 often seen as “the quintessence of bad British cinema” (154), but he also argues for the film’s overlooked virtues as a melancholy portrayal of the crisis-ridden working class (ibid. 165-7). 100 Wieland Schwanebeck The success of Detectorists, then, arrived practically out of nowhere. The pro‐ gramme is a deliberately understated, character-based comedy that evinced its creator’s assured handling of tone as much as his laconic sense of humour by putting the spotlight on a group of eccentric hobbyists without ever subjecting them 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 precious metals. They are forever on the lookout for treasure and gold (symbolically and literally), never discouraged by how overwhelmingly the odds are stacked against them or by the fact that all they ever seem to dig up is ring-pulls, buttons, old biscuit-wrappers, and the occasional bit of change. Much of the screen time is dedicated to what the characters themselves refer to as “finding junk and talking bollocks” (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 these vignettes indicate that Detectorists is quite aware of the generic traditions that it is embedded in (there is the occasional nod to British landmark comedies),3 the series 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 girlfriend Becky (Rachael Stirling) wishes him to be; Lance (Toby Jones), a kind-hearted forklift-driver still reeling from a divorce, who takes delight in trivia knowledge and playing his mandolin; club president Terry (Gerard Horan), a retired police officer and author of the monograph Common Buttons of North West Essex; as well 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 show is middle-aged masculinity in crisis, and while an in-depth reading of Detectorists certainly cannot turn a blind eye to how its male protagonists gently polish their metal detectors and personify them as female (S2/E2, 00:21),4 the focus of the 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 his girlfriend 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’t touch another man’s detector” (S2/E2, 00:21). By the same token, he later fails to make clear to his daughter Kate (Alexa Davies) whether the ‘she’ he is referring to is his girlfriend or his car (S3/E4, 00:20). Detectorists (2014-2017) 101 following analysis will be a different one. I will contextualise the show within a tradition of British comedy that is associated with the perspective of the re‐ silient underdog, and I will show how its deliberately small-scale perspective and 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 Thursday night, 10 p. m. slot on BBC Four for most of its run,5 though this has arguably contributed 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 “like they’ve discovered something for themselves and being sort of special and holding it close to their hearts” (qtd. in Lloyd). Like the archaeological gems that Andy and Lance dream of unearthing, Detectorists seems to have arrived from another era. Aimed firmly at a middle-aged audience (with hardly any character likely to appeal to a young demographic), the show affords few of the more outrageous conceits or stylistic peculiarities that the more daring brand of British TV comedy has become associated with in recent years. There is nothing deliberately edgy or cringeworthy about its humour, even though the dramatis personae is brimming with socially awkward misfits and the setting coincides with that of grotesque, black-humoured, and borderline-dystopian shows like The League of Gentlemen (1999-2002, 2017). As a result, Detectorists would seem rather out of place amongst some of the most prominent and critically acclaimed British 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 played by series-runner Crook and by Toby Jones, one of the most reliable supporting actors in British film and television: Jones’ extensive filmography has taken in everything from independent features to Hollywood blockbusters like the Harry Potter series (where he voiced Dobby the Elf in two films, 2002-2010) or The Hunger Games (2012-2015), and while he has played the occasional lead (for in‐ stance, as the meek sound engineer in Peter Strickland’s mesmerising Berberian Sound Studio [2012]), most of his signature roles have been morally ambiguous, 5 The show was moved up to Wednesday for its final series. See Hogan for an account of its ratings. 102 Wieland Schwanebeck villainous scene-stealers like the gangster Ratchett on ITV’s adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (2010), the shady secret service boss in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), or Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis Culverton Smith in Sherlock (2017). De‐ tectorists ‘promotes’ Jones to leading-man status and supplements his dominant screen persona by emphasising his humanity and warmth; another example of how the show pushes its trademark qualities, suggesting to the viewer that it is always worth taking a second look, and that there is more to the surface than meets the eye. The critics were certainly taken with this agenda: not only did Detectorists receive praise for its “quietly joyous celebration” of “the English countryside” (Lewis) and its “sparse, droll, understated and believable” qualities (Wollaston), the show also won a BAFTA for Best Scripted Comedy (2015), while Jones took one home for Best Comedy Performance (2018). Indeed, the show’s resounding love for the mundane coincides with its not-so-subtle pride in the virtues of the quirky, insular community, a theme I shall 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 that has 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).