A derelict 18th-century inn. A village that refuses to give up. And a comedian who loves pubs a little too much. That’s the setup for Channel 4’s latest restoration gamble, a new More4 series following Jon Richardson as he tries to bring The Plough in Fadmoor, North Yorkshire, back to life after 14 years in the dark.
A comedian takes on a 1782 pub
The working title is A Yorkshire Pub with Jon Richardson, and the brief is simple enough: take a Grade-A slice of rural history, closed since the late 2000s, and turn it into a functioning, modern village local. Simple on paper, brutal in practice. The Plough dates to 1782 and sits in Fadmoor, near the edge of the North York Moors. It’s the kind of pub that once hosted darts nights and post-walk pints. Now, it’s dormant—until a community rescue effort and a TV crew walked in.
Richardson isn’t just fronting it for the cameras. He has bought into Fadmoor Community Pub Limited, the group pushing the restoration, and he’s committing time as well as money. He’s also honest about his motives. He’s a self-confessed pub obsessive who once turned his garage into a mini local—fun, sure, but not enough to scratch the itch. This is the real thing: a bricks-and-mortar project with real costs, real timelines, real risk.
The series will run for eight episodes on More4, produced by Birmingham-based Full Fat TV, and split into two chunks of four. Expect the tone to swing between warm and wry—this is observational TV that leans on community grit as much as it does on Richardson’s dry delivery. On camera, he’ll be doing the awkward bits as well as the funny ones: meeting villagers, juggling trades, and figuring out what it actually takes to open a pub in 2025.
There’s a nod here to the farming-and-fixing TV boom sparked by shows like Clarkson’s Farm. Viewers like watching big, traditional British institutions wrestled into the present day, and pubs are as British as it gets. Channel 4 senior commissioning editor Jayne Stanger calls it a “dream commission”: a known comic with skin in the game, a lively village, and a mission that matters beyond TV.
Richardson, naturally, can’t resist a joke about his role on site—he says he’s ready to “roll his sleeves up and watch other people getting their hands dirty.” But behind the quip is a serious job. Fourteen years of closure means rot, red tape, and a thousand tiny problems you don’t see until you hit them.
Why this pub matters—and why now
This isn’t just a makeover; it’s a test of whether the village pub model can survive when the numbers are tight. Energy costs, staffing, supply prices, business rates—none of that goes away because a community owns the building. What community ownership does change is the purpose. The Plough won’t just be pouring pints; it’s meant to be a hub—somewhere for clubs to meet, walkers to fuel up, and families to gather without driving miles.
Community pubs often raise money through share offers. Locals invest small sums, sometimes a few hundred pounds, sometimes more, and in return they get a say in how the place is run. It’s less about profit, more about keeping a heartbeat in the village. In Fadmoor, that heartbeat has been missing for years, and you can feel the urgency. Peter Jones, who chairs the community company, says they’re delighted to have Richardson on board—and yes, he’s promised to buy the first round when they finally turn the lights back on.
So what will viewers actually see? Not just montages of sanding skirting boards. The story runs through the full arc of a rescue:
- Clearing out a building that’s been shut for over a decade and working out what can be saved.
- Dealing with surveys, costs, and heritage considerations that come with a centuries-old inn.
- Choosing what kind of pub The Plough should be now—menu, prices, events, and opening hours that fit real village life.
- Building the team—finding the right people to run the bar, the kitchen, and the books.
- Testing the space with soft openings and community nights before the big reveal.
The human piece will be the draw. It’s the villagers who carry the place—retirees who remember the old snug, young families who want somewhere to meet on a wet Tuesday, walkers who’ll start and end routes there. When people say pubs are “the beating heart of their communities,” that’s what they mean: not a slogan, a social network in one room.
From Channel 4’s side, the two-part run gives the team room to show painstaking progress rather than a quick TV fix. A pub that old rarely cooperates. You think you’re fixing a door, then find a lintel problem. You budget for paint, then discover a wiring issue. The cameras will catch that reality—plus the jokes, the bickering over tiles, the fundraising nerves, and the relief when the glasses finally clink.
More4’s audience tends to like craft, community, and character. This one has all three. It’s also a timely bet. Rural Britain keeps asking how to keep people—and money—in villages. Pubs aren’t a silver bullet, but they’re a start. If The Plough can reopen with stable books and steady trade, Fadmoor gets more than a bar; it gets a meeting place, a small employer, and a reason to stay local on a Friday night.
No broadcast dates yet, but production is on. The pub has been shut since the late 2000s, so nobody expects an overnight transformation. There’ll be hiccups. There always are. The difference here is the village owns the problem and the solution—and now, so does the presenter. If it works, it’s a template. If it stumbles, at least viewers will see the real cost of saving a rural pub, one stubborn, 1782 brick at a time.