Will (TV series)

Will is a 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.

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.

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.