The Change

Where Was The Change Filmed? Bridget Christie's Forest of Dean

Eel sisters and a DJ called The Verderer. The Change is surreal, but the forest it was filmed in is real, and you can walk right into it.

The Change, Bridget Christie's Channel 4 comedy that ran for two series in 2023 and 2025, was filmed mostly in the Forest of Dean, with the Eel Café built beside Speech House Lake and town scenes shot in Chepstow.

Linda is 50 and menopausal, and she's done with the "invisible work" of keeping a family going. So she dusts off the Triumph motorbike she hasn't ridden in 30 years and heads for the Forest of Dean, "in search of an identity, a purpose, and a tree she climbed as a child", as Channel 4 put it.

Christie knows exactly where she sent her.

"I spent a lot of time as a child in the 1970s in the Forest of Dean, not far from where I grew up in Gloucester, and it holds a very special place in my heart," she said when the show launched.

The Eel Café at Speech House Lake

The Eel Café, with "Eels" painted across its tin roof and woven eel traps propped against the walls, was built for the show near Speech House Lake. It was convincing enough that a Gloucestershire Live reporter visiting the set in 2022 tried to order a flat white.

The cast loved it there. "There was a family of ducks by the Eel Café all the time," Monica Dolan remembered. "The ducklings were really, really tiny when we first arrived, then they got quite big." Laura Checkley, who joined for series 2, had never been to the Forest before. "When we finally saw the Eel Café, sat in the heart of the forest, there was no acting required."

The café itself was a set, so don't expect a menu. The lake is very much there. It's a small fishing lake in Speech House Woods, along Spruce Ride to the south of The Speech House Hotel, and it has form on screen. In the BBC's Merlin it played the lake of Avalon, where Arthur nearly drowns.

Speech House Woods is open from dawn to dusk, parking is free, and the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail and Woorgreens Nature Reserve both link up from the car park. Walk 10 in our 12 Easy Walks takes in the lake.

Local tip: There's no overnight parking at Speech House Woods, so if you want to be at the lake early, stay at the Speech House Hotel just up the road.

The Verderer is a real job

Jim Howick plays The Verderer, "an angry, intolerant and outspoken man; also a DJ at the Forest FM café". The character is a comic invention. Real verderers still sit at the Speech House.

The Speech House was built in 1676 as a court where local people could have their say. The Forest's verderers still meet there to manage what Forestry England calls "the vert and venison", the forest's greenery and its deer. It's a hotel now, with 35 bedrooms, and you can book dinner in the Verderers' Court itself.

The Forest in the story

Plenty of the show's strangeness comes straight out of the Forest. Eels and elvers have long been part of Forest and Severnside life, and when Christie needed a festival to end the first series, the choice was easy. "Eels were the obvious thing to use as they are such a big part of the community," she said.

Jerome Flynn's Pig Man lives off-grid "with only the wild boar for company", and the boar are real. They roam the Forest of Dean today, so Forestry England asks dog owners to keep dogs under close control and within sight, and ideally always on a lead.

Even the vehicles belong here. "There's an old Chevy, there's a Triumph," Christie told the Guardian. "They could only be in the forest." She told Chortle that "foresters are very proud of their land, and very proud to be foresters. In fact, they say that they're neither Welsh nor English."

Series 2 and what happened next

The show came back to the Forest in summer 2024, with Mackenzie Crook of Detectorists co-directing. "To spend a summer in the Forest didn't seem like work, where every way you turn reveals a new, stunning vista," he said. "We were spoilt for choice."

Series 2 aired in March 2025. Town scenes were shot again in Chepstow, where the crew took over the former O2 shop at 7 High Street. Chepstow sits just across the Welsh border on the River Wye, with a castle above the river and the Wye Valley Walk starting in town.

In July 2025 Channel 4 decided not to make a third series. Christie had other ideas. "It's not the end of the road for Linda with me, and I will do everything I can in order to finish her story properly," she wrote. By December she was talking about making it a film. Nothing has been announced yet, so Linda's story stays open for now.

Both series are on Channel 4's 4TheDrama YouTube channel if you want a refresher before your visit.

Stay near the Eel Café

The Speech House Hotel is the closest bed to the lake, with 35 rooms and the Verderers' Court for dinner. For more choice across the forest, browse our places to stay in the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley.

More screen locations to find

Speech House Lake has had more than one screen role. Read how Merlin used it as Avalon, find Otis's house from Sex Education on the River Wye, or follow our Film & TV Trail.