I have made mention of this little gem of a sitcom in the past:
https://wordpress.com/post/lizardyoga.wordpress.com/8343
and as all the world surely knows by now, a metal detector is the piece of kit but the person operating it is called a detectorist.
Detectorists is now back for a third series and though it’s still consigned to the relative backwaters of BBC 4, the Beeb is finally promoting it. I wasn’t quite sure about this series at first: Andy and Becky are back from Botswana where Andy was working on a dig; they have no money and are living with her mother whilst saving for a house. Andy ends up quitting his job on a local dig because his boss doesn’t give a toss about Roman floors; meanwhile the field where they have been detecting for years, is under threat of development.
But from a rather slow start the series has built to last week’s stonking episode. I won’t give it all away since it may still be languishing on your ‘downloads’ list or you may yet have to catch up on the series as a whole: suffice it to say that everything comes together and rather than the gentle comedy which usually prevails, this episode is a firecracker. There’s one brilliant joke after another; the best one being when the pals decide to save a tree by putting a bat box in it. For more information they phone the Bat Action Line which turns out to be staffed by none other than their arch-rivals, the Dirt-Sharks (aka Simon and Garfunkel) who happen to be in a nearby field. The dialogue goes like this:
Phil: could you turn off your phone please? It’s interfering with my detector.
Paul: I’ve had a call.
Phil: So? Just turn it off
Paul: But it’s on the bat-phone!
Sheer genius. Much more than this is afoot and I can’t wait to see how everything unfolds next week. In the meantime, here’s the episode in question:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09hgdx2/detectorists-series-3-episode-5
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 