The many fans of the quiet cult comedy The Detectorists would have particularly enjoyed the second episode of Mackenzie Crook’s Worzel Gummidge reboot. Both shows are written by Crook, both are set in the countryside and for this episode at least, both were about gimlet-eyed obsessives – in this case birdwatchers, rather than metal detectorists.
But their goal was the same – that one elusive find that would make all that legwork worth it. The quarry here was a flock of rare choughs (and I think Crook was in on the pun). For Worzel, played by Crook as if he’s an ages-old part of the landscape, the choughs were a prize find because how often would you get the opportunity to scare such a rarely-sighted bird? For the twitchers, the choughs were just a rarely-sighted bird.
They descended en masse upon Scatterbrook Farm, much to the consternation of Mr Braithwaite (Steve Pemberton), who couldn’t understand why his scarecrow – Worzel – was doing such a bad job and actually attracting, not repelling, corvids.
Adding a sly grin to Mr B’s chagrin was a subplot that revealed Braithwaite was himself a former champion twitcher. He had only hung up his binoculars because long ago his nemesis, Lee Dangerman (Aaron Neil), had sent Braithwaite off on a false trail and made him the laughing stock of the twitcher community. Now Dangerman rocked up at Scatterbrook in search of the elusive chough, and Braithwaite, helped by Worzel, got his chance to exact revenge upon his nemesis.
It was a beautifully-plotted, typically confident piece of storytelling that managed to get in a few subtle ecological messages (“Choughs should be by the sea,” said Worzel, “otherwise things are out of balance”) along with a terrifically choreographed finale in which a crack squad of other raggedy scarecrows all banded together to help our hero out.
To those of a certain generation it remains the case that watching this new Worzel Gummidge comes with a sense of creeping unease: he looks exactly like Freddie Kreuger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, right down to the elongated fingers. Then again a talking scarecrow steeped in pagan ritual is itself quite freaky, when you stop to think about it. Best not to, then, and instead just enjoy life down on the farm.
