Back reunited David Mitchell and Robert Webb for a dark comedy centred around the John Barleycorn, a family pub in Stroud, Gloucestershire. Following the death of his father, Stephen prepares to inherit the business, only for the unexpected return of Andrew, a former foster child briefly raised by the family, to throw his already fragile world into doubt.

Based at Pinewood Studios, the John Barleycorn was purpose-built on K Stage and became the visual anchor of the series. Except, in practice, we didn't build one pub. We built four. The story required the same environment as a functioning present-day pub, extensively fire-damaged, subsequently refurbished and, finally, transformed back to its 1980s incarnation for flashbacks.

As Set Decorator, that meant establishing an environment with enough history and character to feel genuinely accumulated, while allowing it to change convincingly through each stage of the story. Furniture, pictures, lighting, bar dressing and the innumerable bits and pieces that gather in a long-established family pub all helped give the John Barleycorn a life beyond the immediate action.

And there was a lot of it. Across the various incarnations we dressed with 126 dining tables, 885 chairs and four tonnes of cut logs, alongside the enormous quantity of practical dressing needed to make a working pub feel convincing. The set extended beyond the public areas into an under-stairs office and back-of-house kitchen, each evolving alongside the main space as the story progressed.

Beyond the John Barleycorn, the series took us into numerous domestic locations and culminated in a substantial outdoor summer festival, complete with fairground rides, food stalls and all the glorious visual clutter.

Back was a particularly satisfying exercise in continuity and transformation: creating a familiar place, establishing its history and then repeatedly dismantling, damaging and reinventing it without losing the identity that made it recognisably the same pub.

ONE PUB.
FOUR
LIVES.

Following the John Barleycorn from the 1980s to the present day, through fire and refurbishment, while retaining the history and character of the pub throughout.