I love this series, it's quiet and understated, thoughful, funny, quirky and basically brilliant. It's like comfort food. Thanks to Mackenzie Crook for creating it and the Guardian for this review :: It used to be customary for sitcoms to change their location when they returned, after the end of the regular series, with a film spin-off or a feature-length Christmas special. The characters would be holidaying abroad, perhaps, or at least loading up the car and going to an unfamiliar part of the UK. Detectorists (BBC Two), one of the very greatest sitcoms, would never do that. It is as rooted in the eastern English countryside as a thick oak. The farthest afield it can comfortably travel is to a neighbouring field.

Five years since we last saw them, nothing much is different for middle-aged best pals Andy (writer/director Mackenzie Crook) and Lance (Toby Jones). Their big news is a fresh “permission”, a green light to hunt for buried artefacts on farmland unvisited by detectorists. Their conversation with the landowner, who repeatedly refers to the duo as “metal detectors”, sums up Andy and Lance’s view of anyone who doesn’t share their passion: they tolerate his ignorance for as long as is necessary, but are happy when he has left them alone to survey their new domain.

This is a comedy about not going anywhere, for good and for ill. The way Andy and Lance have devoted hours, weeks, years to pacing up and down in mud, waiting for their detectors to beep, is representative of enthusiasts and dreamers everywhere: concentrating on something esoteric helps them to delay confronting tricky real-world issues such as relationships, careers and emotions. But the show is also about recognising that everything you need in life might be right in front of you, from the loving partner who tolerates your silly obsessions, to the green hills at the edge of your humdrum town that are as beautiful as any far-flung vista. A quiet afternoon in the clean air and a pint of local ale in the pub with a friend afterwards is reward enough.