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Escape to the Chateau
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Reality · 2016

Escape to the Chateau

British couple buy a 45-room French ruin and film themselves doing it up over nine seasons.

Starring Angel Adoree· Dick Strawbridge· Tracy-Ann Oberman
Overview

Dick Strawbridge and Angel Adoree traded their Essex flat for Château-de-la-Motte Husson, a 19th-century pile in Pays de la Loire with no heating, electricity or working plumbing. Channel 4 followed the pair, their two toddlers and a rotating crew of local artisans across nine seasons as they patched roofs, plumbed loos and threw increasingly ambitious weddings to pay the bills. Each 47-minute episode charts a single project: hand-printing 1,000 invitations in the apple orchard, forging a wrought-iron staircase, or turning the moat into an ice-rink for Christmas. The tone stays cheerfully domestic; Strawbridge swears at recalcitrant boilers in clipped military tones while Adoree sources vintage velvet and home-schools the children in a turret.

Narrator Tracy-Ann Oberman supplies sardonic commentary over time-lapse vines being ripped from façades and champagne corks popping at finished parties. Ratings held steady above two million, spawning the spin-off Chateau DIY and a 2023 podcast, Dick & Angel’s CHAT…EAU, where the couple revisit their first sight of the 112-step entrance and the moment they realised the asking price was only £390,000. Production ended in December 2022 with the chateau licensed for 60 weddings a year, a fully stocked orchard and a reputation for parties that finish under fireworks reflected in the moat.

Production Details

Channel 4 / 9 Seasons / 52 Episodes / 2016

Main Cast

Angel Adoree as Self

Dick Strawbridge as Self

Tracy-Ann Oberman as Narrator (voice)

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Kip Ford
Kip Ford
TV Critic & Editorial Director
Kip Ford is Editorial Director at TV Reference. His encyclopedic knowledge spans every era of television history, with particular expertise in British and American drama, crime, and the golden age of network TV.