Created By: Helena Seneca

Directed & Written By: Helena Seneca

Produced By: Helena Seneca, Halle Stanford

Production Companies: 7 Crow Stories

Synopsis: London. The 1610s. The plague is back, the theatre is broke, and one gloriously chaotic family is determined to keep the show on the road.

The Bard Busters is a bold, single-camera live-action family comedy set backstage at the Globe Theatre, where the wildly theatrical Buster family stage Shakespeare’s greatest plays with unstoppable passion and questionable practicality. Think Horrible Histories meets Malcolm in the Middle — in doublets.

At the centre is Patience (13), a sharp-witted mechanical genius who insists she wants nothing to do with the family business. She would rather build bridges than perform in corsets. But when the sets collapse and the company begins to crumble, it is Patience’s engineering brilliance that saves the day. Reluctantly, she becomes the unsung backbone of the troupe.

Her twin brother Henry (13) feels most alive when playing Shakespeare’s heroines, sweeping across the stage as Juliet or Rosalind. Offstage, he is shy, uncertain, and learning how to stand confidently as himself.

Their younger brother Sonny (10) lives entirely for the spotlight. Whether he is playing a tree, a sheep or delivering a single line, he throws his whole heart into every moment, desperate to be seen and applauded.

Presiding over the chaos are their parents: Frances (33), a fiercely ambitious and visionary director who worships Shakespeare and loves her children with equal intensity, and Johnny (35), the resident clown whose jokes keep the family afloat even when everything else is falling apart. Completing the troupe is Uncle Robin (30), a gifted tragedian with a flair for melodrama and a deep need to be taken seriously.

Around them swirl the theatrical world of Jacobean London:

• William Shakespeare (late 40s), charismatic, brilliant, and not entirely comfortable with how freely the Busters reinterpret his work.

• Ozzy Shah (late 40s), a wealthy merchant’s son unexpectedly cast as a romantic lead.

• Harmony Fields (14), determined to perform despite the law forbidding women on stage.

• Felix Monroe (32), a classically trained actor who challenges and inspires the troupe.

• Camille Ross (40), the Globe’s sharp-tongued finance manager trying to keep art from bankrupting the building.

Each episode centres around a different Shakespeare play, mirroring the family’s own drama. Feuds erupt during Romeo and Juliet. Jealousy flares in Othello. Magic and invention collide in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ambition spirals in Macbeth. The stage becomes a playground where their personal struggles are heightened, parodied, and ultimately healed.

The Busters argue loudly, compete fiercely and occasionally threaten to quit mid-rehearsal. But beneath the theatrical chaos is a family bound by loyalty, creativity and deep love. As their inventive productions win over audiences, they rise from struggling players to the most talked-about troupe in London. Success brings pressure, rivalry and even a brewing feud with Shakespeare himself, yet what keeps them going is not fame, but each other.

The Bard Busters is joyful, irreverent and full of heart. It celebrates Shakespeare as something alive and playful, and at its core, it is about a family you cannot help but root for — messy, passionate, endlessly creative and always stronger together.

Because theatre is chaos. Family is chaos. And when you love both, the show will always go on.