Any hobby or interest that’s not sport-related is always portrayed on TV as something for sad and lonely people. If you’re not into football, the thinking goes, you must be an anorak with no social skills. Yet millions of us immerse ourselves in specialised pastimes that help us escape from the real world for a few hours every week: think fishing, motorcycling, stamp or coin-collecting. Or metal detecting, which happens to be the subject of a six-part BBC sitcom I’ve written and directed, as well as taking one of the leading roles, alongside Toby Jones. Created by Mackenzie Crook, Detectorists follows Andy, a wannabe archaeologist who, alongside his friend Lance, spends time in muddy fields with a metal detector
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Mackenzie Crook is starring in six episode comedy series Detectorists
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It follows Andy, a wannabe archaeologist who loves metal detecting
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The Office star revealed that this was also his secret hobby
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A Georgian shoe-buckle and a musket ball have been his best finds
It is one of these caches of treasure that Andy (that’s me) and Lance (Toby Jones) long to find in @placeholder — though more often than not they find only ring pulls and junk.