Fields of mud filled with comedy gold
Mackenzie Crook’s drama shows metal detectors in a new light, say Theo Merz and Sally Saunders
The members of the Mid Cornwall History Hunters gather around as Taff McAuliffe digs up an object from the field. He holds up what looks like a dirty hair clip. McAuliffe is convinced it was used by the Romans to hold their clothes together, rather than a woman’s hair accessory dropped a few years ago and brought back up to the surface by summer ploughing. “If this is Roman, that’s beautiful,” the 57-year-old mechanic says as he fingers his possible treasure. “It could be the most exciting find I’ve had in 20 years of metal detecting.” Metal detecting itself is entering an exciting time, and could be about to find a new throng of fans. A new BBC comedy called The Detectorists – written, directed and starring Mackenzie Crook, best known for playing David Brent’s assistant Gareth in The Office – is bringing the pastime to a new audience. The six-part series follows Crook’s character Andy as he attempts to locate the hoard of the Saxon King Sexred, with the help of the Danebury Metal Detecting Club. “I’ve always been interested in history and archaeology, and I’ve always loved the idea of uncovering something from the past,” says Crook. “I bought a woodland several years ago which has an old bridle path running through it. I got a metal detector to search that pathway. “Within 10 minutes of turning on my detector I found a silver Victorian sixpence. It was as if someone had planted it there just to get me hooked.” His experiences have inspired him to continue. “The appeal is in finding something that was lost centuries ago and has lain undiscovered ever since. To be the first person to see and handle that artefact since it was dropped is to reach back through the centuries and have a direct, physical link to the ancient past. “It’s the closest we can get to time travel.” So how does it measure up to the thrill of acting? “To compare a standing ovation on a Broadway stage to finding a Georgian shoebuckle in a Suffolk field would be a ridiculous comparison. But both will go down as exciting memories I will never forget.” He describes the whole show as a “love letter to the British countryside” and presents, on the whole, a charming view of the detectorists, people who are moved by a passion like his own, such as Paul Richards, a retired 65-year-old who has been a detectorist since the Seventies. “You just don’t know what you’re walking on,” says Richards. “Last year I came across what I thought was a scrap of metal but turned out to be a bronze-age axe. Somebody dropped that 5,000 years ago and there I was holding it.” Richards has got lucky again today, picking up what seems to be a French coin, with a date of 1516. Ben Gregan, who is responsible for convincing farmers to let the group of detectorists come onto their fields, is optimistic that the new comedy will be a good thing for the History Hunters. “I hope the programme will get a few more people into it. I hope it’ll show landowners what we’re really like too, so they’ll let us come on their land. It can sometimes be quite hard to convince them; some people give the rest of us a bad reputation.” McAuliffe, though, can only think about the object he dug up earlier, and what the people at the museum will make of it. It could be the find of his metaldetecting career. Or, of course, it could just be a dirty hair clip. ‘ The Detectorists’ is on BBC Four on Thursday at 10pm