Detectorists is the gentlest comedy ever made, and it is not slight

Two metal detectorists sweep fields in rural England. They find ring pulls. Occasionally they argue with a rival club. That is the show.

Why it is more than it sounds

Because the detecting is a way of writing about men who cannot talk about anything directly. Everything important in the series is said sideways, while looking at the ground, in the middle of a conversation about something else.

Mackenzie Crook wrote and directed all of it, and the control is remarkable — the comedy never pushes, the sentiment never tips over, and the pacing is unhurried in a way that television almost never permits now.

The thing people do not expect

It is beautiful. Shot in real fields in real light, with long takes of not very much, and a recurring visual device involving what is buried underneath the characters that pays off in the final episode of the series.

That last shot is one of the best endings in British comedy and it takes three seasons of near-nothing to earn it.

The caveat

If you need jokes per minute, this is not that. It is amusing rather than hilarious for long stretches, and it asks for patience.

Start on

Episode one. Three seasons of six half-hours — about nine hours total, and the shortest genuinely great comedy you can commit to.