Storytelling Across Time

As genres blur, many TV makers use hybrid forms to examine identity, memory, and history. The ambitious Lithuanian-British writer and creative producer Nina Barbora Evans will combine time travel, psychological reality, and historical reflection in her forthcoming series London.

The project is centered around Lena Potwin, an Eastern European woman whose life spans nine marriages and several decades, unfolding across multiple historical, cultural, and imagined settings. The story is structured as a blend of fictional drama and surreal commentary and does not aim to present linear answers. Instead, it invites audiences to confront unresolved questions about migration, belonging, trauma, and transformation.

The show’s concept was born not from market trends but from personal and observed experiences. Nina Barbora has lived through cultural shifts and geopolitical transitions and has often spoken about the challenges people face navigating unfamiliar social environments. Her past work in public health, biography research, and cultural diplomacy lends the narrative a multidisciplinary depth, reflecting internal and external forms of dislocation.

Instead of framing London as a typical drama, the creative team used overlapping timeframes and psychological states. Each of Lena’s marriages illuminates a unique period, addressing human relationships and socio-political circumstances. The Cold War, Soviet collapse, post-communist repatriation, and global worries shape the story.

Surreal elements—anthropomorphic creatures, parallel realms, and therapeutic devices like “Constellation Puzzle Out Therapy” (POT), a reoccurring structural motif—set the project apart. Through these devices, the story probes into themes of fate, loss, and personal agency without anchoring itself to a single interpretation. Talking animals, for instance, are not comic relief but symbolic figures offering commentary on human dilemmas.

The production process itself has not been without challenges. According to Nina Barbora, the early stages involved standard industry obstacles: delays in securing financial backing, time lost to unverifiable collaborators, and the practical hurdles of scripting a show that refuses easy categorization. A series Bible, character arcs, and the pilot episode have been completed, but the scale of the project—projected at 10 seasons and nearly 100 episodes—requires significant and sustained investment. Each season is designed to explore one of Lena’s marriages within a distinct temporal and cultural frame, culminating in a finale that situates her as a survivor and a guide for future generations.

Nina Barbora has expressed a particular interest in ensuring that the production values match the complexity of the narrative. Over decades, the script has covered languages and regions. It recalls World War II, Chernobyl, and the breakup of the USSR and envisions a future with robots. These threads are backgrounds for human challenges, not attractions.

While comparisons to shows like Outlander, The Man in the High Castle, or Dark have emerged in early discussions, London remains fundamentally its own project. It shares a concern for alternate realities and shifting temporal logic with these series, but its philosophical leanings and psycho-emotional depth suggest a different objective. There is no straightforward protagonist arc, singular antagonist, or formulaic resolution. Nina Barbora wants to let viewers watch, contemplate, and—most importantly—feel uncomfortable.

Show emotions vary significantly from episode to episode. Some episodes are satirical, others contemplative or melancholy. In one scene, a dinner conversation slides into surreal absurdity as each participant’s unspoken trauma begins to manifest through external imagery. In another, Lena interacts with a version of herself that never left her country of origin—a confrontation that becomes less about science fiction than the psychological cost of self-reinvention.

Beyond the technical execution and narrative form, the thematic undertones remain grounded in social observation. Through Lena’s trajectory, London examines how systemic structures—bureaucracy, patriarchy, migration policy—shape personal lives in both visible and invisible ways. The show also critiques the assumptions built into romantic mythology, asking whether the idea of a “perfect partner” is a cultural construct or an existential impossibility.

While a release date has not yet been confirmed, and casting decisions remain under discussion, Nina Barbora continues to work closely with collaborators on script development and visual pre-production. She works with Linzy Attenborough, and the duo may create early teasers to test audience response before full-scale production.

Nina Barbora answers pragmatically yet ambitiously on the project’s long-term aim. She wants a program that evolves with its viewers, exploring personal and historical storylines throughout seasons. Nina Barbora still avoids overstatement. She says, “If it can start a few conversations that people weren’t having before,” it’s worth the effort.

London may be unclassifiable, but its rise reflects a multidisciplinary, internationally aware, and psychologically broad narrative trend. Whether or not it ultimately finds commercial success, it represents a conscious effort to use television not as a distraction but as a space for confronting personal and collective histories through narrative form.

As production advances, how the project will be received remains to be seen. But if early drafts and concept materials are any indication, London is not a series designed for passive consumption. It asks more questions than answers, invites ambiguity, and avoids the safety of a genre label. In doing so, it reflects a kind of storytelling that is less about resolution and more about recognition—of complexity, contradiction, and the quiet persistence of human reinvention across time.