Will is an historical fiction television series about the life of William Shakespeare in his early 20s. The series was ordered for a first season, consisting of ten episodes, on May 18, 2016. It premiered on TNT on July 10, 2017, and concluded on September 4, 2017. It was originally ordered to series at Pivot in 2013 but was never broadcast. On September 5, 2017, the series was canceled after one season.
Contents
Plot
Young William Shakespeare is a struggling playwright who tires of making gloves in order to support his wife and three children. He travels to London and sells one of his plays to a theatre owned by James Burbage. In doing so, he befriends the rest of the company, pushes out the previous playwright and falls in love with Burbage's daughter, Alice. While seeking fame and fortune in London, Will keeps his Catholicism secret from those who would threaten to kill him and exploit his connection to the wanted Robert Southwell. As he makes a name for himself, he finds that he is saddled with saving a dying theater company and finding a place in a city that is hostile to his religion.
Cast
Main
Laurie Davidson as William Shakespeare
Olivia DeJonge as Alice Burbage
Ewen Bremner as Richard Topcliffe
Mattias Inwood as Richard Burbage
Jamie Campbell Bower as Christopher Marlowe
William Houston as Kemp
Lukas Rolfe as Presto
Max Bennett as Robert Southwell
Colm Meaney as James Burbage
Recurring
Nancy Carroll as Ellen Burbage
Michael Nardone as Edward Arden
Jamie Beamish as Augustine Phillips
Nicholas Farrell as Francis Walsingham
Edward Hayter as Sir Thomas Walsingham
Nicholas Woodeson as Philip Henslowe
Henry Lloyd-Hughes as Edward Alleyn
Bruce MacKinnon as Robert Greene
Deirdre Mullins as Anne Shakespeare
James Berkery as Jeremy Knightstand
Zubin Varla as Edward Kelley
Jasmin Savoy Brown as Emilia Bassano
Kenneth Collard as Justice Young
Leon Annor as Marcus
Vauxhall Jermaine as Demetrius
Kristy Philipps as Apelina
Ben Fox as John Shakespeare
Tadhg Murphy as Baxter
Amanda Lawrence as Mary Shakespeare
Michael Elwyn as Lord Hunsdon
Will Irvine as Samuel Ward
Dean-Charles Chapman as Billy Cooper
Reception
The series has received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the series has a rating of 56%, based on 32 reviews, with an average rating of 6.20/10. Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, reported that there were "generally favorable reviews" for the series, with an average score of 62 based on 27 reviews.
