For Joshua, it was Death at first sight.
A crowded dancefloor. A spilled drink. A handsome young man steps on a live cable. A mysterious green-eyed stranger invites him to follow her. Will he say no? Would you?
He is young, strong, fit, healthy. Everything to live for. Surely, it can’t be his time?
But when a green-eyed, ebony-skinned, honey-voiced woman invites him to follow her he finds himself unable to resist.
She guides him down through the hidden levels of the city, each one stranger than the last.
Has Death come to collect him? Or is she just amusing herself? Is he dead? Or just a diverting plaything?
Playful, cheeky and faintly melancholy. The title promises a risqué story, and it keeps that promise in spirit while finding something tender underneath it. The comedy is British and understated: embarrassment, politeness in the face of the absurd.
The underworld is London itself: the ‘Under-London’. Beneath the canapés and lanyards sit the night streets, then the clubs, then older and deeper places: ghost-ridden dancehalls, lost rivers, plague pits, Roman baths. Each episode takes him one level further down. Death is at home in all.
Jet black, slender, unhurried, in a long black halter-neck dress. Seductive but distant. She is never cruel, just honest in a way the living find rude. Joshua's willingness to simply follow her is the first thing to surprise her in centuries.
Thirty-ish, olive skinned, softly northern. In good shape but short on confidence. Not unhappy, but not doing much living either. Then again, how many of us check the drinks menu in Hell?
Moustache, red satin, laced to the sternum. He keeps the door of a nightclub where the clientele may not all be living, and greets Death like a regular. Which she is.
Every episode takes Joshua one floor further beneath London. The dial shows where he is.
A glitzy awards ceremony. A spilled drink, a live power cable, a bang. As the smoke clears, Joshua locks eyes with a woman nobody else seems to notice. He follows her out. Of course he does.
The canapés and lanyards
A walk through night-time London. To his horror, he realises he is naked. His resolve weakens until she offers to lend him her red silk underwear.
Sodium lights, wet tarmac
An unmarked door. A moustachioed host who knows her well. A demonic nightclub where the clientele may not all be living. Has she brought him here to leave him?
Drinks served with garnish
The heat rises. For the club's regulars, the torments of the damned are merely an aphrodisiac. Flirtation sharpens, the air crackles, Joshua panics. She decides to show him the other place.
Climate: infernal
A radical change of pace and style. A sunlit garden, silks and furs, blossom, the drowsy drone of stingless insects. They fall into a perfumed bower. We can guess the rest.
Fruit trees, no wasps
The locals are not friendly. Death is not welcome here, and she is forced to explain: she isn't working. Joshua amused her, but it's time for him to go back. He comes round on the dancefloor. He lives.
Return ticket
An old man rides a London bus alone. Bare trees, grey skies. Then, to his astonishment, the jet-black back of a young woman on the seat in front. This time he is happy to follow her. This time it may be for keeps.
Westminster Bridge, final stop
Death takes Joshua home. His age falls away. Young again, and still inadequately dressed in her knickers, he explores her collection: the last possessions the dying leave behind. Then they dress for the evening.
Lost property, everyone's
Suited and booted at the Café de Paris, bombed in 1941. In death, inhibitions go. The dead dance every night until the clock strikes ten past ten. A roar of flame. Darkness. Then it all starts again.
Coventry Street, nightly at 22:10
Death wants to keep dancing. At Highgate Cemetery the party carries on, with a huge number through the catacombs led by some of its famous residents. (The dead love to dance, apparently.) Then she pulls Joshua away to find some privacy…
Lower floors: unexploredVertical, ninety seconds, each episode ending on a turn. Micro-drama is where audiences are watching, and this one has a title people repeat to their friends.
Under-London has lost rivers, plague pits, Roman baths and ghost-ridden dancehalls still to visit. Every floor is a new look, a new genre and a new set of locals, with Death at home on all of them.
Ten finished episodes, fully generated with AI, written, directed and designed by one creator. This is not a deck asking you to imagine the show. You can watch it.
We are looking for seed finance and production partners to take the series further down.
Trained as an artist at the Ruskin School, Oxford University, Matthew spent the 90s in Los Angeles working in the film industry before returning to Europe for 25 years as a creative director in digital design.
Since 2022 he has been exploring the frontiers of generative AI. In 2025 Middlesex University awarded him a PhD for research into AI as a creative collaborator in contemporary art. His thesis, Something Rich and Strange, introduced AI to the language, themes and characters of Shakespeare.
When Death Took Her Knickers Off is where those threads meet: universal stories, beautiful technology and some light-hearted metaphysical musing on saying yes to life by saying yes to death.