By Franz Amussen
COMING THIS month to Acorn TV is season two of Detectorists, the acclaimed British comedy featuring Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones as a couple of oddballs scouring the British countryside for treasure. If you haven’t yet seen this show you’re missing out on one of the most original and charming half hour comedies from the old country in recent years.
As well as starring in the show, Crook (best known as Gareth from The Office) has also written and directed the show, which revolves around the friendship between himself and Jones, a pair of mismatched and troubled souls who seem more comfortable on the company of their metal detectors than their fellow men. But these men are not treasure hunters. They style themselves rather as ‘detectorists’, joning forces with a local club of like-minded folks, comprised of an affable ex-military type, two lesbians, a bearded hippie and a youthful Asian. All are misfits in search of a life-altering find like Saxon gold or a Viking burial mound, but more often come up just with soda cans and the other detritus of modern life.
Set in an unnamed but gorgeous corner of the English countryside, the six-episode season slowly unfolds as the detectorists are enlisted by a mysterious German visitor to help unearth the mystery of a downed Second World War German bomber. And although the settings are confined, the characters and their individual stories are rich in texture and detail, proving again that old cliché about all the world being found in a small English village. The deceptively simple story lines are expertly written, nicely shot and excellently acted. The show boasts the same sort of gentle charm with the occasional moment of laugh-out-loud humor that made Last of the Summer Wine such an enduring favorite. This is the sort of the stuff which the British do better than anybody and Detectorists is certainly worth thirty minutes of your time.
Acorn TV is an online service with over 1,800 hours of programming available, including timeless British classics including Rumpole of the Bailey, Lovejoy, Cadfael, Upstairs Downstairs, The Midsomer Murders, Taggart, Cracker and the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The services costs $4.99/month, and is available on Roku, Samsung Smart TV, iPhone, iPad, and via their website at acorn.tv
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