Clapham and District Village Newsletter, August 2025 [PDF]
“Will you search through the loamy earth for me?
Climb through the briar and bramble;
I'll be your treasure…
I'm waiting for you.”
This is how TV’s Detectorists theme tune begins. It’s a lovely song by Johnny Flynn which you can listen to here. I discovered Detectorists recently, and late: it was first screened in 2014; and I soon became a fan. It’s a gentle, sublimely scripted sitcom with a great cast, based around the Danebury Metal Detecting Club (DMDC), a small collective of enthusiasts who spend all their spare time in fields of Essex stubble, and meet every Tuesday in the scout hall opposite the Two Brewers on the High Street to discuss each others’ finds (mostly ring-pulls and buttons).
The series’ writer and actor Mackenzie Crook said that “I wanted Detectorists to be uncynical… a slower-paced, understated show that wasn’t out to test any boundaries or be controversial, a comedy that didn’t need a gag every eight seconds but had space to breathe.”
The programme’s subject matter, he says, is “people and their hobbies, the strange obsessions with which people fill their spare time.” Underlying it all (pun very much intended), Detectorists is about finding treasure.
Andy (played by Crook) and Lance (Toby Jones of ‘Mr Bates and the Post Office’) are obsessed with the idea that a royal Saxon ship-burial is located on a nearby farm, and that drives the storyline through the programme’s three series. But whilst this subterranean treasure eludes them, the characters find greater value in their relationships, which fluctuate just as our own relationships do, between hope and loss, love and betrayal, acidic lemonade and convivial ale. Viewers see them develop in unexpectedly profound ways. Detectorists sweeps the surface of ordinary everyday life and unearths precious hoards in the hidden depths.
Andy knows that his greatest treasure is Becky, his ambitious schoolteacher partner whose trust he twice has to recover, after having his head momentarily turned by an attractive student DMDC newcomer, and then struggling to support Becky in her desire to volunteer abroad. Self-absorbed divorcee Lance finds something in life to cherish when his long-estranged daughter Kate comes along to turn his loner lifestyle upside-down.
Episode by episode, above the tree where Lance and Andy sit eating their lunch, the magpies go about their own treasure hunt; whilst beneath their feet, as Johnny Flynn’s song plays, the camera pans deep down into the English earth to rest, eventually, on the elusive, glistening, Danebury hoard.
I recently posted this message on a Detectorists fan page: “I'm a vicar and a couple have asked me if they can open their wedding service with Johnny Flynn's Detectorists theme song. I think it's perfect for the occasion. I've told them I'll be emotional.” I was overwhelmed by the unreservedly positive response this received from well over 500 people, including one who commented, “My daughter had it for her wedding, it was indeed a very emotional way to start proceedings, I didn't really recover!”, and another who wrote, “We gave our lovely dad a natural burial and followed his wicker coffin out to his burial to that song. It was just so perfect. Our dad loved wildlife and bees and is now surrounded by them always. Us 3 girls made his coffin topper from all the wildflowers he had planted in his garden … a perfect send off for him that felt so spiritual.”
We’re all seeking treasure of some sort. It’s wonderful when you find it, especially in everyday life. It’s even better when it’s a treasure you discover, and share, together with others.
Detectorists is on BBC iPlayer.
