The BAFTA-winning BBC comedy drama Detectorists, written and directed by Mackenzie Crook, opens its third episode of series three with Lance detecting in warm sunshine alongside Linda Lusardi. It is, of course, a dream. The beeping that pulls him out of it is not his pinpointer but his alarm clock, and he wakes up in his bedroom with a smile on his face and a stack of neatly arranged Searcher magazines on the bedside table. By the time he is loading the TR7 and peeling a single leaf from the bonnet, the day has barely begun and everything still feels possible.
Host Katie is joined by Ellie (@miss_detectorist, Miss Detectorist on YouTube), fresh from her own Roman adventures and the recent discovery of an Edward the First hammered penny. The episode wastes no time establishing its stakes. The morning begins with what Mackenzie Crook's script describes as the most painfully slow car chase ever filmed, as Lance and Andy find themselves stuck behind Art and Paul's moped on a single-track country lane, unable to pass, watching the clock. When they finally do overtake, the slipstream ripples a couple of blades of grass at the roadside and they high five like they have won something significant. In a way, they have. They get first pick of the field.
What Andy finds there changes the episode entirely. A handful of pottery sherds, blackened not just on the outside but inside, which he identifies as consistent with a Roman cremation burial urn. Ellie, who has been picking up similar material on her own permission and researching exactly this question, digs into what it means: the cremation pyre, the ashes interred in a pot, and the implication that what the show has been building toward from the very first episode is a grave with goods. Two magpies watch from above as Andy makes his case. Two for joy. Meanwhile, across town, a JCB has gone through the mosaic Andy found last week. His boss lets it happen, apologises briefly, and tells him he should not have lifted the flagstone. Andy quits on the spot and is told calmly that the paperwork will be sorted. He does not tell Becky. He goes to see a clinical new-build flat with her instead, admires an inaccessible shed through the kitchen window, and says nothing.
Lance, returning from a night shift, walks past Maggie emerging from his bedroom in a sort of exhausted fugue state, says hello, carries on making his tea, then registers what he has just seen and drops to the floor in pure horror. Maggie has let herself in, gone through his letters, slept in the flat and, by the end of the episode, drunk the bottle of wine Tony had given Lance as a reward for his hypnotherapy. When Lance calls to explain that the weekend is off, he stands in the pub garden leaving a voicemail full of small untruths. Slippery slope, mate, says Andy. He does know.
The episode ends with one of the great cruel jokes the show has ever told. Lance finds a coin in the field. There is an unmistakable glint of gold. His camera battery is dead so he goes to fetch Andy, and a magpie arrives at the open hole. By the time they run back, in slow motion, it is already gone. In the pub, Lance tells the story and the group struggles to keep straight faces. Sheila, as ever, has the only line that matters. The tale of the magpie, she says, and the greedy man. Lance and Andy end the episode camping under the lunch tree, looking for Orion, quietly in the exact field that holds everything.
Featuring: Andy (Mackenzie Crook), Lance (Toby Jones), Becky (Rachel Stirling), Tony (Orion Ben), Terry (David Sterne), Sheila (Sophie Thompson), Maggie (Lucy Speed).
Find Ellie at @miss_detectorist on Instagram and at Miss Detectorist on YouTube. For more metal detecting chat, interviews, and the history behind the finds, follow Katie and the Detecting History Podcast on Instagram and YouTube at @detectinghistorychannel, and listen on all major podcast platforms. Shop at Regton and use promo code DHPODCAST for 10% off selected items at checkout.
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