Have you seen the British comedy series Detectorists? (It’s on Netflix.) It’s kind of like The Office in that the comedy is extremely dry and the show itself is rather quiet and understated—which makes sense because it’s about two slightly awkward guys (Mackenzie Crook—Gareth on the original The Office; and prolific character actor Toby Jones) who wander about various fields and historical sites in England with their metal detectors, seeking out treasure but usually finding trinkets or nothing. It’s probably a pretty accurate depiction of the life of a detectorist, which is what guys with metal detectors call themselves, because it’s far more dignified and technical-sounding than “guys with metal detectors.”
The thrill and allure of actually finding treasure is what propels a detectorist—both real ones and on Detectorists—to get up early, drive far away from home, and slowly walk around a field all day, hoping for that huge, once-in-a-lifetime score. Paul Adams and Andy Samspon thought that their day had come. They were tooling around with their metal-detecting tools in a greenspace on the Suffolk/Essex border when they uncovered more than 50 gold coins, along with some pottery.
“Paul kept running at me shouting, ‘Roman gold!’ and I thought, ‘he’s winding me up’,” Sampson told the BBC. “He was floating across the top of the field rather than running through it. I wish I’d had a camera.”