Lance & Andy

The Detectorists is a quieter, more specifically British addition to the list, and possibly the most purely Wayfarist thing on television. Two men with metal detectors, walking fields in Essex, finding very little of monetary value, and finding it entirely sufficient.

Their cause is small and self-chosen. They are looking for treasure — Saxon gold, ideally — but the looking is the point more than the finding. They have committed to this pursuit without any guarantee of success, without social recognition, without obvious reward. They do it anyway. They do it every week. They will probably do it forever.

Their mastery is genuine. They know their fields. They know their machines. They know the history beneath their feet, the patterns of settlement and cultivation, the places where something might be buried. The expertise is real and hard-won, even if the outside world considers it eccentric.

Their transmission is the friendship itself. Andy and Lance pass on to each other, constantly, a way of being in the world — patient, attentive, unhurried. They maintain each other. When one is struggling, the other notices. The detecting is the excuse; the friendship is the substance.

And the levity is the whole texture of the show. Gentle, unhurried, aware that what they are doing is slightly absurd and entirely worth doing. The jokes are small. The drama is small. The lives are small. And none of this is presented as a limitation. The show insists, quietly but firmly, that small lives lived with attention are not lesser lives.

The Detectorists is what Wayfarism looks like on a Tuesday afternoon when nothing dramatic is happening — which is most of the time. The bearing does not require a crisis to be valid. Motion does not require urgency. The treasure may never be found. The looking is still worth doing.

"This is the best bit, though, isn't it? Just before you find out what it is. Anything's possible."