| Genre: | Historical drama |
| Creator: | Craig Pearce |
| Num Seasons: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 10 |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Producer: | Andrew Wood Jill Bilcock Mary Richards |
| Cinematography: | Erik Wilson |
| Runtime: | 47–57 minutes |
| Network: | TNT |
Will is a historical fiction[1] 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.[2] [3] It was originally ordered to series at Pivot in 2013 but was never broadcast.[4] [5] On September 5, 2017, the series was canceled after one season.[6] [7]
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.
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.[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.[11]