''Will'' is an American
drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...
television series about the (fictional) life of
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
in his early 20s. The series was ordered for a first season, consisting of ten episodes, on May 18, 2016. It premiered on
TNT
Trinitrotoluene (), more commonly known as TNT, more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reagen ...
on July 10, 2017, and concluded on September 4, 2017. It was originally ordered to series at
Pivot
Pivot may refer to:
*Pivot, the point of rotation in a lever system
*More generally, the center point of any rotational system
*Pivot joint, a kind of joint between bones in the body
*Pivot turn, a dance move
Companies
*Incitec Pivot, an Austra ...
in 2013, but was never broadcast. The series premiered at 9:00pm
EST, but after four weeks, was moved to 11:00pm. On September 5, 2017, the series was canceled after one season.
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 cast
*
Laurie Davidson as
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
*
Olivia DeJonge
Olivia DeJonge (; born 30 April 1998) is an Australian actress, known for playing Tara Swift / Shaneen Quigg in ABC1's '' Hiding'', Becca in the film '' The Visit'' (2015), Elle in Netflix's '' The Society'' (2019), and Priscilla Presley in the ...
as Alice Burbage
*
Ewen Bremner
Ewen Bremner (born 23 January 1972) is a Scottish character actor. His roles have included Julien in ''Julien Donkey-Boy'' and Daniel "Spud" Murphy in '' Trainspotting'' and its 2017 sequel '' T2 Trainspotting''.
Early life
Bremner was born i ...
as
Richard Topcliffe
Richard Topcliffe (14 November 1531 – late 1604)Richardson, William. "Topcliffe, Richard (1531–1604)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, « Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, January 2008. Accessed 26 July 2013. ...
*Mattias Inwood as
Richard Burbage
Richard Burbage (c. 1567 – 13 March 1619) was an English stage actor, widely considered to have been one of the most famous actors of the Globe Theatre and of his time. In addition to being a stage actor, he was also a theatre owner, entr ...
*
Jamie Campbell Bower
James Metcalfe Campbell Bower (born 22 November 1988) is an English actor and singer. He made his feature film debut in 2007 with a supporting role in '' Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street''. He went on to feature in '' The Twiligh ...
as
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the ...
*
William Houston
William Churchill Houston ( 1746 – August 12, 1788), a Founding Father of the United States, was a teacher, lawyer and statesman. Houston served as a delegate representing New Jersey in both the Continental Congress and Constitutional Conventi ...
as
Kemp
*Lukas Rolfe as Presto
*
Max Bennett as
Robert Southwell
*
Colm Meaney
Colm J. Meaney (; ga, Colm Ó Maonaigh; born 30 May 1953) is an Irish actor known for playing Miles O'Brien in '' Star Trek: The Next Generation'' (1987–1994) and '' Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'' (1993–1999). He has guest-starred on many T ...
as
James Burbage
Recurring cast
*
Nancy Carroll
Nancy Carroll (born Ann Veronica Lahiff; November 19, 1903 – August 6, 1965) was an American actress. She started her career in Broadway musicals and then became an actress in sound films and was in many films from 1927 to 1938. She was t ...
as Ellen Burbage
*
Michael Nardone
Michael Nardone (born 20 January 1967) is a Scottish actor. He was raised in Ballingry, Fife and trained in Drama at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.
He starred as Mascius in the BBC/ HBO/RAI TV series Rome and appeared as DCI Richard ...
as
Edward Arden
Edward Arden (c. 1542–1583) was an English nobleman and head of the Arden family, who became a Catholic martyr.
Arden lived in Park Hall, Castle Bromwich, an estate near modern-day Birmingham. He was a recusant Catholic and kept a priest, Hugh ...
* Jamie Beamish as
Augustine Phillips
*
Edward Hayter
Edward is an English language, English given name. It is derived from the Old English, Anglo-Saxon name ''Ēadweard'', composed of the elements ''wikt:ead#Old English, ēad'' "wealth, fortune; prosperous" and ''wikt:weard#Old English, weard'' "gua ...
as
Thomas Walsingham
*
Nicholas Farrell
Nicholas C. Frost (born 1955), known professionally as Nicholas Farrell, is an English stage, film and television actor.
Education
Farrell was educated at Fryerns Grammar and Technical School in Basildon, Essex, followed by the University of ...
as
Francis Walsingham
Sir Francis Walsingham ( – 6 April 1590) was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster".
Born to a well-connected family of gentry, Wals ...
*
Nicholas Woodeson
Nicholas Woodeson (born 30 November 1949) is an English film, television and theatre actor, and Drama Desk and Olivier award nominee.
Early life
Woodeson was born in Sudan and lived in the Middle East as a boy. He started performing at prep sc ...
as
Philip Henslowe
* Kristy Philipps as Apelina, Presto's sister
*
Henry Lloyd-Hughes
Henry Lloyd-Hughes (born 11 August 1985) is an English actor. He is known for his roles in ''Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire'' (2005), '' Unrelated'' (2007), ''The Inbetweeners'' (2008–2010), '' Miliband of Brothers'' (2010), '' Weekender ...
as
Edward Alleyn
* Bruce MacKinnon as
Robert Greene
*
Deirdre Mullins as
Anne Shakespeare
Anne Hathaway (1556 – 6 August 1623) was the wife of William Shakespeare, an English poet, playwright and actor. They were married in 1582, when Hathaway was 26 years old and Shakespeare was 18. She outlived her husband by seven years. V ...
* James Berkery as Jeremy Knightstand
*
Zubin Varla
Zubin Varla (born 1970) is a British actor and singer. He played the role of Judas in the 1996 West End revival of ''Jesus Christ Superstar'', alongside Steve Balsamo (Jesus), Joanna Ampil (Mary Magdalene), and David Burt (Pilate). This produc ...
as
Edward Kelley
Sir Edward Kelley or Kelly, also known as Edward Talbot (; 1 August 1555 – 1597/8), was an English Renaissance occultist and scryer. He is best known for working with John Dee in his magical investigations. Besides the professed ability to ...
*
Jasmin Savoy Brown
Jasmin Savoy Brown (born March 21, 1994) is an American actress. She has appeared in the HBO mystery drama series '' The Leftovers'' (2015–2017), the ABC legal drama series '' For the People'' (2018–2019), and the Showtime psychological d ...
as
Emilia Bassano
*Kenneth Collard as Justice Young
*Leon Annor as Marcus
*Vauxhall Jermaine as Demetrius
Episodes
Reception
The series has received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics. On the
review aggregation
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the series has a rating of 61%, based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 6.22/10.
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, 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
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...
score of 62 based on 27 reviews.
See also
*''
Upstart Crow
Upstart or upstarts may refer to:
* HMS ''Upstart'', a Royal Navy U-class submarine
*Upstart (company), an online lending marketplace
*Upstart (software), a process management daemon used in several operating systems.
* Upstart (sculpture), a publi ...
'', a British sitcom about William Shakespeare
*
''Will Shakespeare'' (TV series), a 1978 six-part historical drama
References
External links
*
*
*
{{TNTShows
2010s American drama television series
2010s American LGBT-related drama television series
2017 American television series debuts
2017 American television series endings
Cultural depictions of William Shakespeare
English-language television shows
TNT (American TV network) original programming
Television series by Studio T