CHRISTOPHER STEVEN: Enough of the mammoth binges, give us nuggets of pure TV gold
special detectorists
Classification: ****
Death in Paradise Christmas Special
Qualification: **
The problem with Christmas is that everything comes at once. All those gifts and food, piled up in one gigantic binge.
Long after you’ve had enough, when you’d rather dish it out a little, you’re bound to move on. And that applies to TV. also.
On the basis that more is better, Christmas TV specials are always too long. On the same day, Santa delivered an hour and a half of Call The Midwife, another 90 minutes of Doc Martin, and a full hour of EastEnders, which really goes against the natural order.
The excess continued with Detectorists (BBC2), writer-director Mackenzie Crook’s paean to the English countryside. This charming portrait of an uneasy friendship between men was perfect as a series of half-hour episodes, but the main series ended five years ago.
Crook and Toby Jones play Andy and Lance, a pair of middle-aged history buffs whose favorite pastime is scouring a fallow field with metal detectors, hoping to find buried treasure.
In half-hour doses, I could watch Detectorists forever. Scattered across the script like shards of pottery are clever little jokes, just waiting to be found.
The prospect of a new miniseries, spread over three weeks, would have been a real splash of holiday cheer. Instead, the entire story was condensed into a single 75-minute special, which was just too good.
Detectorists has always been one of those shows that, if you’ve never seen it, doesn’t seem like much. Crook and Toby Jones play Andy and Lance, a pair of middle-aged history buffs whose favorite pastime is scouring a fallow field with metal detectors, hoping to find buried treasure.
Andy is a gentle soul, married to a perpetually exasperated schoolteacher (Rachael Stirling).
Lance is single, fussy, and a bit pompous, with some surprising depths he keeps well hidden. The two are happiest when they’re sitting under a tree, comparing notes on the latest round of the College Challenge, but the unpleasantly emotional business of life keeps intruding.
In half-hour doses, I could watch Detectorists forever. Scattered across the script like shards of pottery are clever little jokes, just waiting to be found.
When Lance and his daughter Toni (Rebecca Callard) looked into a briefcase containing pieces of sacred gold, the glow lit up their faces, like gangsters John Travolta and Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction.
And when the boys decided to alert archaeologists to their latest find, Lance commented, “all that history under Bodie and Doyle,” rhyming slang for soil.
“We should call in the professionals,” Andy agreed. You have to be a certain age to understand that joke. The story was filled with beautiful glimpses of animals, insects, and flowers, and capped off with a glimpse of Biblical history (unless it was just a dream shared by Lance and Andy).
Death In Paradise (BBC1) made the same mistake, extending its perfect hour-long format by 30 minutes and thus losing much of its fun and tension.
Death In Paradise (BBC1) made the same mistake, extending its perfect hour-long format by 30 minutes and thus losing much of its fun and tension. These Caribbean mysteries rely on momentum to propel us forward. The plots are so silly, the murder mechanisms so improbable, that it’s not safe to stop and think about them.
As long as there’s another twist or slapstick, with Detective Neville (Ralf Little) falling over his own two feet, we’ll be taken. But this story, about a little boy who went off looking for Santa on Christmas Eve and disappeared, started going around in circles, with repetitive flashbacks.
Les Dennis was unrecognizable as a chatty psychic with black dyed hair, and the best character, callous true crime podcaster Siobhan McSweeney, was cut too early.
And thanks to big changes at the precinct, Don Warrington’s grumpy sheriff is the only familiar face left. Death In Paradise seems to be on its last legs.