A middle-aged American actor, disenchanted with Los Angeles life, falls for an aging Brit, sells up in sunny California and relocates wholesale to our small, soggy island where – while navigating vitamin D deficiency and confusing colloquialisms – he charms both the locals, who band together to support his highly ambitious (read: potentially harebrained) scheme, and the nation’s aristos, who welcome him into their rarefied world of ancestral piles and shooting parties.
Except, in this Hollywood rom-com, the aging Brit is a decrepit 15th-century manor house on the verge of condemnation outside Rochdale, and the American actor is, by his own admission, wholly inept at even rudimentary DIY, let alone large- scale historic reconstruction.
Hopwood DePree became de facto lord of the manor at Hopwood Hall
