All's Well That Ends in Essex

What do you get when you cross Shakespearean tragedy with WKD, emotional damage, and a laminated pub menu?
Welcome to All's Well That Ends Well in Essex—a feral romantic comedy about fake weddings, spiritual blackmail, and one man's tragic war with commitment.
Helly works nights for the NHS and keeps a folder full of emotional receipts. Barry's a tracksuit-wearing romantic fugitive with a vape addiction and a GCSE in ghosting women. After one too many ignored texts and a very suspicious "soz been mad busy xx," Helly takes matters into her own hands.
What follows is a spectacularly misguided mission to lock down love by any means necessary—including forged documents, a faked honeymoon night in the dark with the wrong woman, and a Wetherspoons wedding officiated by a man in a Burger King crown called Ken.
Throw in:- Psychic mothers- Pigeons with prophetic powers- TikTok beefs- And a spiritual tribunal held in a bingo hall
... and you've got a Shakespearean love story dragged backwards through an Essex car park.
It's messy. It's petty. It's got a heart.
And it ends, more or less, in Wetherspoons.
Part of the ADAPTATIONS series: bold, funny, reimagined Shakespearean stories set in the tragicomic chaos of modern Britain.
Perfect for Fleabag, This Country, Dolly Alderton fans, and people who've ever cried in a pub toilet but came out stronger for it.

Martin Foskett is a writer, trader, photographer, and historian with over 20 years in media and publishing. He runs Knelstrom Ltd, where he combines his work in history, geopolitics, trading, and visual storytelling into monthly books, reports, and art.
When not writing or analysing markets, he's raising two kids and building an independent archive of work that cuts through the noise.