Thomas Middleton

Beatrice-Johanna is engaged to a man she does not love. When she meets Alsemero, Beatrice is frantic to break her engagement. Enter DeFlores, her father's servant, a man she detests, and who loves her desperately enough to do anything to win her good graces. In the seething intrigue that follows, Beatrice and De Flores both lay hands on what they want in a love story that runs with blood.

Cottrell Boyce's script mixes the original Jacobean language with modern asides and sets Middleton's story in the year 2011, in the aftermath of a natural disaster which has destroyed the southern half of Great Britain a dystopia in which society is collapsing and where vendettas and the crude exercise of power are the norm. In a post-apocalyptic Liverpool of the future, a wronged man returns from a self-imposed exile to bring down those responsible for his wife's murder. (wikipedia.org)