A trampoline is rolling down a hill towards two men who are trying to detect in a gale. Bishop drives past and asks if there's a child in it. He says potentially.
Your host Katie is joined by Ross (Instagram: @detectorosst) for Series 2, Episode 5 of the BAFTA-winning BBC comedy drama Detectorists, written and directed by Mackenzie Crook, which first aired on BBC4 on the 26th of November 2015.
Sitting in the tractor furrows with their sandwiches, Andy very casually drops that he got the job. Lance immediately clocks he hasn't told Becky. Andy opens up about what he's actually scared of: taking his family to a malaria zone when he has no idea what he's doing once he gets there. Lance, newly philosophical since Kate came into his life, says sometimes in life we have to step off cliffs. Andy says he's heard all that before. Where? Oprah Winfrey. Back off. He reaches for the letter to check the deadline and it's not in his pocket. Must have fallen out. It's a sign. Lance says there's no such thing as signs. Andy says there are when you want there to be. Back at the house, Becky finds the letter on the floor, reads it, and says nothing.
At the pub, the barman has Peter's wallet. Lance goes through it despite Andy's protests, finds a driver's licence in the name of Peter Bauman, and then tips the wallet up and a gleaming gold coin spins onto the table. It's German. There's an eagle. It's holding a wreath. Lance covers it with a beer mat and will not touch it. The word for what it is cannot be said in Terry's house, and Terry makes this very clear when the emergency meeting assembles in the operations room, Sheila in her rockabilly swing dress having laid on a buffet and pressed lemonade on everyone. She says she'll get the door before the doorbell rings. She has done this before.
Sophie arrives ruffled, having learned from Peter that he's leaving and it was nice to meet her. She shouts at the club and storms off. That evening by the campervan, Simon and Garfunkel arrive in full night hawking gear and she finally sees it. The stakeout that follows is organised by an ex-copper coordinating by walkie talkie from outside a Lindy Hop, with nobody positioned to see the actual site. Lance has night vision goggles. This is his third stakeout. The first was a marrow. The second was an ex-girlfriend, which Andy says is stalking. Art's beloved Arado detector is run over by a police car. Russell talks in his sleep and says margarine. The mayor steps out of the darkness. It turns out he was in it too.
Andy gets home late to a furious Becky who points out she has a three-month-old baby and says I've got, not we've got. He tells her they caught three bad guys and one got away. She tells him she got on the BSO scheme and she and Stanley are going to Botswana. He lies about the letter once too often and she says it plainly: you're too spineless to take it. She fell in love with him because he's a dreamer, but when it comes to the crunch he won't act on those dreams. If you don't act on your dreams, there's no risk of failure or disappointment. She walks out and leaves that in the room.
Featuring Toby Jones as Lance, Mackenzie Crook as Andy, and Rachel Stirling as Becky.
Find Ross at @detectorosst on Instagram.
For more metal detecting chat, interviews, and the history behind the finds, follow Katie and the Detecting History Podcast on Instagram and YouTube at @detectinghistorychannel, and listen on all major podcast platforms.
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