Lead · NarratorCole Sinclair
Manager of Club 108. Charcoal suit, open collar, no tie, and a story for everything. He narrates his life to us, mostly to justify it.
Est. 2020 · Southeast London
Stories from the inner city, ready for the screen.
Urban Shakespeare is a writers' collective. We build TV and film concepts all the way through: scripts, episodes, characters, trailers and key art. Then we put them in front of the people who commission.
On the slate2 series in development
What every project comes withPilot, episode plan, trailer, posters
Who we're looking forWriters with stories that haven't been seen
Now in development
Full slate →
Burning Cole, a dark comedy series. They thought he was finished.
Concept trailer
Ikenga, a crime action thriller series. 250 years of service. One way out.
In development
Crime drama · Series
Your genre here
The Line
A ten-episode crime drama. More to come.
In developmentYour story
The next slot on the slate is open to collective writers.
Submissions openLatest trailer
All trailers →The problem
The door was shut
Writers from working-class and diaspora backgrounds rarely get the network or the money to get a pilot made.
The shift
AI changed the cost
We can now show a series as a trailer, a poster and a world before anyone signs a cheque.
The plan
Open it for everyone
Build concepts so complete that networks and streamers come looking, then bring other writers through with us.
The slate
Every project, one room each
Open any title for its story, characters, episodes, trailer and artwork.
Burning Cole, a dark comedy seriesConcept trailer
Ikenga, a crime action thriller seriesIn development
Crime drama · 10 episodes
Open slotThe Line
In developmentYour story
Submissions openTrailers
See the shows before they're made
Every trailer here is an AI-generated concept, built from our scripts to show what each series will look and feel like on screen.
Now showing
Burning Cole
They thought he was finished.
The official concept trailer. Cole Sinclair runs Club 108, and his life is about to catch up with him.
- Type
- Official trailer
- Length
- 1:21
- Genre
- British dark comedy
- Created by
- Obi Offomata & Camilo Parra-Braun
Coming next
Original series · British dark comedy
Burning Cole
They thought he was finished.
Cole Sinclair runs Club 108, a luxury West End nightclub. He also has a boss with two wives, a feisty assistant manager, a gangster on speed dial, one real friend and court-ordered therapy. And he's telling you all about it.
Format8 × 50–60 min · season one
PilotGood Morning Mr Sinclair (scripted)
SettingClub 108, London's West End
Created byObi Offomata & Camilo Parra-Braun
The world
Burning Cole is set in London nightlife. Cole Sinclair manages Club 108, a dark-marble-and-brass West End club where the job is simple: fill it with pretty people who like to spend money. Everything else in his life is less simple.
His boss Mo owns the club and has a marriage that is about to get complicated. Anna, his assistant manager, runs rings around him. London, a gangster with impeccable manners, is the man Cole calls when he needs something sorted. His best mate TC doubles as his bodyguard. And a judge has made sure that every week ends in a chair opposite Dr Stoker.
How it plays
Cole narrates his own life straight to the audience, part confession and part "how to" guide for men on dating, playing the field and the situations to avoid. He is dry, cheeky and usually a step behind the chaos he has caused. The club is the serious side of the show, with the real pressures of running a venue. The people in it are the comedy. And underneath it all, a figure from Cole's past is coming back.
Where it comes from
The series grew out of Obi's blog about years spent working in London nightclubs and bars: the dates, the rejections and everything that happens behind the velvet rope. Recognised UK artists feature throughout the series, putting the British music scene on screen where it belongs.
Genre
British dark comedy
Think
Snatch meets Phone Shop, in a London nightclub.
Audience
18–40, anyone who has ever had a big night out and wondered what goes on behind the bar.
Available
Pilot script, eight-episode season outline, character designs, concept trailers. Pitch pack on request.
Main cast
Lead · Narrator
Assistant managerAnna Saunders
Feisty and sure of herself. She works under Cole. Sorry, for Cole. She is the only person at Club 108 who can make him turn up on time.
Club ownerMo
The cash-cow owner Cole has to keep sweet. Sharp, tailored and loud, with a home life that is about to collide with his club.
Gangster on speed dialLondon
Every club needs one, and there's no better. Polite, precise about his drinks, and probably called Keith.
London's twinMumbles
London's identical twin, with glasses and a properly tied tie. Silent and watchful. He doesn't need to say anything.
Best mate · BodyguardTC
Ex-rugby, deadpan and the closest thing Cole has to a friend. He won't wake Cole up, but he will stand between him and anyone else.
Court-ordered therapistDr Miriam Stoker
The one appointment Cole can't skip. She has heard every excuse and has no patience for the next one.
Resident DJDJ Flyboy
One set at a big after-party and now he has an entourage, a manager and a list of demands. He fills the club, so everyone handles him carefully.
Supporting cast
Samira
Elegant, impatient and asking the questions Mo least wants to answer.
Apple
Works the bar for Cole and keeps TC on a very short lead. She thinks Cole is a bad influence, and she isn't wrong.
Ted
The glasses-wearing tech whizz who runs the club's website. Usually mid-game, and he hates being interrupted.
Paddy & Dom
The door team. Paddy is a ticking time bomb who hates being touched. Dom is huge, calm and usually quoting Shakespeare.
01Scripted
Good Morning Mr Sinclair
Pilot. Cole hunts for a big act for the club's monthly night while handling an over-demanding DJ. We see his charm, his management and a glimpse of his darker past, before a mysterious figure walks back into his life.
02Outlined
Mo Money, Mo Problems
The council inspects the club, and it fails badly. Cole has to save the club's licence, while Mo tries to manage two women in a life with room for one.
03Outlined
Private Caller. Ignorer.
A private number won't stop calling, and Cole has a theory about those. In therapy, Dr Stoker pushes him to talk about his family, and the caller turns out to be his estranged brother.
04Outlined
Prodigal Son
Cole vanishes with his brother just as Time Out wants to review the club. Desperate, Mo decides to be Cole Sinclair for the interview.
05Outlined
Wannabies
Cole finds Mo's face in the magazine under his name. A new band won't believe he's the real Cole, so he proves it with a packed night, and Anna notices where he's looking.
06Outlined
Take Over Bid
Cole chases the band's lead singer and runs into a rival who means to block him. Mo, struggling with his wives, finally asks Anna for advice.
07Outlined
Making the Band
Cole calls in every favour for the band's showcase, and Mo decides he wants to be the next music mogul. The two clash, Anna tells Cole some hard truths, and Cole storms off.
08Outlined
Ready, Steady, Mo
With Cole missing again, Mo runs the showcase and shines. Anna is starting to lose patience with Cole, and we finally see where he has been.
11:21 · Out now
Official Trailer
Cole Sinclair, Club 108, and a life about to catch up with him.
2Coming soon
Meet the Cast
Cole introduces the five people who run his life.
3Coming soon
Pilot Cut
A comedy montage from the pilot.
Original series · Crime action thriller
Ikenga
250 years of service. One way out.
Behind the glass towers of the City, a secret syndicate of London law firms settles what the courts can't. Arinze Ezenwa, known at work as Morgan Hale, is one of the people they send.
Format8 × 50 min · extended 70 min pilot
The firmHale, Ashcombe and Thorne
StatusPilot in writing
Created byObi Offomata
Night, deep in the English countryside. Arinze bursts out of the back of a grand manor house in a torn, mud-soaked suit, a carved spirit mask in his hand. He came to take something. What he found inside changed everything.
Gunfire from the house drives him behind the low brick wall of an old animal pen. He fires twice. Then his gun clicks empty. His car is twenty-five yards away across open ground, and the bullets are churning the mud in between. One round tears through his shoulder.
His phone lights up: ASHCOMBE. One of the partners. Checking the job is done, or checking that he is? He lets it ring.
Cut to black · Seven months earlierSeason one is the story of how he got there.
The world
By day, Arinze is a star litigator at Hale, Ashcombe and Thorne, winning civil fraud cases in court. By night, the firm uses him for the cases that can't go to court: finding people who have disappeared, recovering what was stolen and protecting clients from rivals who don't play by the rules. A rival firm wants the same clients, and it has its own people.
The title
In Igbo tradition, the ikenga is the shrine of a man's right hand: his strength, his drive and what he achieves by his own effort. The series asks what that strength costs when it's put to work in the shadows.
Genre
Crime action thriller
Season one
Eight episodes of about 50 minutes across seven months, opening with an extended 70-minute pilot.
Action
Rooftop chases, close-quarters fights, car and motorbike pursuits.
Main cast
LeadArinze "Zee" Ezenwa
Known at work as Morgan Hale. The firm's star litigator and the sharpest mind it owns. He reads a crime scene like a case file, drives like he was trained for it, and will never be made partner.
Partner in the fieldTomasz "Tom" Wójcik
Arinze's right hand. A brilliant, underestimated solicitor who taught himself the law from library books. Speaks English, Polish, Russian and Serbian, and prays before every door he opens.
Tech and intelligenceKelechi Ezenwa
Arinze's eldest brother and the family's Q. A government scientist by day; his real lab sits behind a phone repair shop in a Bermondsey railway arch. If it can be hacked, traced or wiped, Kelechi does it.
Weapons and tacticalChibuike "Buike" Ezenwa
The second brother. Ex-British Army, with a past he doesn't talk about and a Dagenham lock-up full of false-plated cars and an armoury. Arinze's sparring partner and get-out-of-jail card.
Managing partnerHenry Ashcombe
Eton, Oxford, the Bar, and heir to a peerage. Commanding, polished and casually cruel. He knows who in Parliament is clean, who is dirty and who is for sale.
PartnerWilliam Thorne
Head of the Thorne empire: a private bank, an auction house and stakes in the press. He doesn't have friends, only people he owns.
WifeTara Ezenwa
Former model, now global marketing director for a luxury fashion house, and the other half of London's it couple. She knows what her husband is, but never what he's doing. Her family runs the rival firm.
Information and cover storiesAdaeze Ezenwa
Big Sis. A sought-after fashion photographer nobody notices, so people say anything in front of her. Her "little birds" run from Mayfair to Peckham, and she taught Arinze how to read a room and how to lie.
01In writing
Pilot
Arinze wins a stolen-company case in court, then goes after the accountant who vanished with the evidence.
02Planned
Episode title to come
The first appearance of Mmanwu.
03–08Planned
Episodes to come
The season runs across seven months, back to the farmyard where it began.
The Ikenga universe
Every city has a law firm at the top and someone who does its hardest work. Each spin-off gets its own title in its own language.
Tokyo
A retainer from a shinobi family, bound by honour.
Cape Town
A Namibian-born retainer raised in the Cape Flats.
Rivers State
Arinze's father, alone, hunted by a rival firm's retainer.
Vidigal, Rio de Janeiro
A protector of the people the city forgot.
Our story
2012Burning Cole, the series, is written: 12 episodes and a pilot.
2020Lockdown and the protests in London. The collective is conceived.
2026AI makes it possible to show the work. Burning Cole and Ikenga go into development.
NextOpen the slate to writers from across the city.
If I open the door, others can come through.
In the summer of 2020, during lockdown, protests filled London's streets, and the news ran with anger and pain night after night. Watching it, Obi Offomata saw people like him, from the same concrete jungle, carrying stories nobody was telling. He wasn't an activist; he was a writer. And he believed that pain, given a creative space, could become characters, worlds and whole universes, and that he could bring others with him.
Obi grew up in the inner city of Southeast London, in a working-class family that came here from Nigeria. Like the people who came before him, he wanted to make a place in the world for himself, and to make room for others while he did it.
Make the ideas so loud that the networks have to listen.
A collective, not a company of one
Urban Shakespeare brings together writers with stories that haven't been seen, along with the people who can help bring them to the screen. Alone, a writer without a network or funding hits a wall. Together, we're harder to ignore.
Why AI
For years the barrier was financial resources. You needed finance to shoot a pilot and a network to get it seen. In 2026 that has changed. We write the scripts and episodes, then use AI to produce the trailers, posters and artwork that show what each series will look like. Every project on this site is a proof that it can be done, and an invitation to make it for real.
Founder · Obi (Alex) Offomata · Meet the creators →
The creators
The people behind the stories
Founder
Obi Offomata
Creator, writer & producer
Obi Offomata is the founder of Urban Shakespeare and the creator, writer and producer of every series on its slate. He grew up in the inner city of Southeast London, in a working-class Nigerian family, and that world runs through everything he writes.
He started writing by accident, around 2007. After a relationship ended badly, he wrote about what happened, printed the story out and handed copies round at university. People wanted more. The stories about dating kept coming and grew into a popular blog, Life Through the Eyes of a Single Man, which he turned into a book that is still on Amazon Kindle today.
A few years later, while working at a nightclub in North London, he came up with Burning Cole and wrote the original screenplay with his co-creator, Camilo Parra-Braun. They pitched it to a multimedia company, but it didn't go their way, and the project was shelved. Obi spent the years that followed presenting radio shows and podcasts, still writing and still hoping Burning Cole would get its moment.
The passion for writing never left him. What was missing was someone willing to believe in the work, so he built the door himself. Urban Shakespeare gives him the tools to bring his stories to the screen, from Burning Cole back off the shelf to new series like Ikenga, and a platform to connect with other creatives and grow the movement.
"If I open the door, others can come through."
IkengaCrime action thriller · Creator, writer & producerIn development
Burning ColeBritish dark comedy · Co-creator & co-writer · Director & producer of the official trailerTrailer out now
Urban ShakespeareDrama · Creator & writer · Twelve-episode seasonSeason one written
Life Through the Eyes of a Single ManBlog and book · AuthorOn Amazon Kindle
Radio & podcastsYears presenting radio shows and podcastsPresenter
Co-creator
Camilo Parra-Braun
Writer & co-creator
Camilo Parra-Braun is a London-based writer developing television and film projects in crime drama, horror and dark comedy.
Before writing, he spent over 15 years at the front door of London's most talked-about venues, including Le Caprice, Scott's, the Ivy Club, The Sanderson and St Martins Lane. As Head Doorman and later Head Concierge, he worked among VIPs, regulars, paparazzi and the occasional chaotic night. That gave him an ear for how people really talk and an eye for what they hide.
Camilo and Obi's friendship began almost twenty years ago, when they met at university over football and gym sessions. They shared many a laugh over failed dates, making light of their apparent inadequacies as single suitors. Eventually those anecdotes became the backbone of their idea: relatable, funny stories built on their own mishaps. They have been close ever since, backing each other through the hard times as well as the good ones, and as creative partners they push each other to bring their ideas to life.
Camilo's writing also draws on personal loss. The death of his wife in 2016 changed his life, and it left him with a deeper empathy and a gentle ear for anyone living with grief or loss. That sensitivity sits alongside his dry wit, and he is drawn to stories that are funny, unsettling and human in equal measure.
Burning ColeBritish dark comedy · Co-creator & co-writerTrailer out now
Mari's TalesShort stories · Writer · True moments from his life with Mariana: funny, foul-mouthed and full of heartIn development
A Doorman's MemoirsSeries · Writer · Drawn from his 15 years on the doors of London's most talked-about venuesIn development
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Last updated: 31 October 2026
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