1 :01x01 - Oliver's Dream

Theatre Sans Argent is in deep financial trouble. Former actor and now Artistic Director Geoffrey Tennant, is forced to give his greatest performance since walking off stage in the middle of a production of Hamlet seven years before. He has to pretend the rent cheques won’t bounce. Meanwhile, his former best friend and colleague, Oliver Welles, Artistic Director of The New Burbage Shakespearean Festival, has sold his artistic soul for commercial success. Ellen Fanshaw, his aging leading actress and Geoffrey’s former inamorata, reluctantly takes on the role of Oliver’s nagging conscience. After celebrating the Festival’s opening night with a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, a heavily inebriated Oliver sees Geoffrey on the television news playing Custer to the Sans Argent’s Alamo. Drunkenly calling to commiserate from a phone booth, Oliver passes out on the road and the New Burbage Festival loses its leader to a pork truck.

2 :01x02 - Geoffrey Returns

Richard Smith-Jones, the Festival’s General Manager, meticulously orchestrates Oliver’s memorial service. In actual fact, Richard is auditioning for the vacant artistic director role, while visiting dignitaries confuse the memorial with a Friar’s Roast. Kate, a wide-eyed acting apprentice, sneaks off to Toronto for a commercial audition and meets Jack Crew, Hollywood-star-cast-as-Hamlet, on the bus back to New Burbage. When Geoffrey pays his respects to Oliver, he discovers death has given his old colleague a new loquacious vitality. Ellen takes up with Sloan, a local stud-muffin, but is less than delighted with Geoffrey’s reappearance, especially when it’s announced that he has been named the Festival’s new Interim Artistic Director.

3 :01x03 - Madness in Great Ones

Geoffrey’s first official act as Interim Director is to pass the helm of the Festival’s flagship Hamlet production over to show-dog Stage Director, Darren Nichols. In order to ease into his new duties, he elects to supervise the “Shakespeare in Business Seminar” – the Festival’s new cash cow scheme. Kate and Jack spend an afternoon at the movies eating popcorn and feeding the rumour mill, as ambitious board member Holly Day spirits Richard off to Toronto for a performance of Mamma Mia followed by alcohol-inspired scheming for a new Festival business plan. Geoffrey alienates everyone by giving a scathing interview to veteran theatre critic Basil and then, after a boozy confession of love, crashes a party at Ellen’s and challenges Darren to a sword fight of honour.

4 :01x04 - Outrageous Fortune

In the wake of Ellen’s party, Geoffrey bides his time in jail where Oliver’s spirit drops by to counsel him on the dangers of suppressing his past feelings for Ellen. Kate and Jack’s friendship develops well past the point of friendship. As Holly and Richard work toward realizing their dream of a Shakespearean-themed retail village, Sloan, Ellen’s dirt biker/knight in shining armour, rides off to defend her honour against the invading hordes - Geoffrey and Darren. Unable to avoid the inevitable, Geoffrey fires Darren, a turn which reassures the cast, but worries the Board of Directors and plays into Holly’s hands. Board Chair May Silverstone, Geoffrey’s only champion, sees the oncoming corporate storm, but collapses under the strain of Holly’s plotting and ends up in the emergency ward.

5 :01x05 - A Mirror Up to Nature

6 :01x06 - Playing the Swan

It’s high noon in the Shakespearean Corral. The opening day of Hamlet and Jack has disappeared. This inspires Oliver to question Geoffrey’s directorial skills. Ellen comes clean about what really happened that fateful night seven years ago, and Richard, now labeled as a traitor, suspects he had been duped into loin-dancing with Holly just to facilitate her corporate maneuverings. Kate rescues Jack from the abyss of low self-esteem, and Oliver, a man of seemingly infinite jest, makes his last stage appearance. As Frank Sinatra said, the best revenge is massive success.

7 :02x01 - Season's End

Geoffrey's first season as Interim Artistic Director wraps up with a permanent posting and the cast decide they miss Oliver terribly. The Festival is in severe financial crisis without its sponsor Cosmopolitan Lenstrex, and Richard goes to wannabe board member and savvy businessman Mr Archer, begging for a financial infusion. Jack, leaving to star in his next blockbuster film, proposes to Kate- an offer she is inclined to refuse in favour of her acting career. And Ellen's boytoy, Sloan also proposes, an offer she refuses after Ellen and Geoffrey argue their way into their first kiss in seven years. The new season's programme is announced which includes, much to Geoffrey's dismay, Macbeth - a mandated tribute to the late Oliver Welles.

8 :02x02 - Fallow Time

9 :02x03 - Rarer Monsters

Darren Nichols comes back from Berlin when the director of Romeo and Juliet breaks her neck.

10 :02x04 - Fair Is Foul and Foul Is Fair

Sanjay counsels Richard to embrace the left side of his brain by taking up the clarinet.

11 :02x05 - Steeped in Blood

Ellen confuses her auditor with a confessor.

12 :02x06 - Birnam Wood

13 :03x01 - Divided Kingdom

With last season's Macbeth the toast of Broadway, Geoffrey is under pressure to deliver another hit. The play he has chosen is an even greater challenge: King Lear. Terrified to climb this Everest alone, he seeks out his ghostly mentor, Oliver Wells. But Oliver is nowhere to be seen. As for Ellen, Geoffrey's on again/off again lover, she is too busy taking Geoffrey's panic personally to be of any help. So Geoffrey turns to his boyhood hero Charles Kingsman, who he coaxes out of retirement to play King Lear. Elsewhere, Executive Director Richard Smith-Jones immerses himself in the Festival's feel-good junkie musical, East Hastings, directed by Darren Nichols. A battle rages between the musical and drama companies, with a threesome of young lovers, Paul, Sophie, and the beautiful but dimwitted Megan, caught in the middle.

14 :03x02 - Vex Not His Ghost

15 :03x03 - That Way Madness Lies

16 :03x04 - Every Inch a King

17 :03x05 - All Blessed Secrets

18 :03x06 - The Promised End