Will Sharpe
- Actor, director, producer and writer
Press clippings
BAFTA TV Awards 2022 nominations
Alma's Not Normal, Motherland, Stath Lets Flats and We Are Lady Parts have gained BAFTA nominations. Meanwhile Aimee Lou Wood, Aisling Bea, Anjana Vasan, Natasia Demetriou, Rose Matafeo, Jamie Demetriou, Joe Gilgun, Ncuti Gatwa, Samson Kayo, Steve Coogan and Tim Renkow are up for acting awards.
British Comedy Guide, 30th March 2022Landscapers review
Will Sharpe's flourishes make this murder mystery unforgettable TV.
Ed Cumming, The Independent, 8th December 2021Defending The Guilty's second series cancelled because of coronavirus
Defending The Guilty will not be returning for a second series. The BBC Two legal comedy was commissioned to shoot further episodes last year, but due to cast availability being impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic the show has now been cancelled.
British Comedy Guide, 30th March 2021Defending The Guilty Series 2 confirmed
BBC Two has ordered a second series of Defending The Guilty, the legal-based sitcom starring Will Sharpe and Katherine Parkinson.
British Comedy Guide, 23rd October 2019In the penultimate episode of this breezy litigating comedy, our ethically compromised trainee barrister Will (Will Sharpe) is put through his paces this week in a mock trial, where he learns the art of cross-examination, while rivals Danielle (Gwyneth Keyworth) and Liam (Hugh Coles) have a romantic run-in with their fictional clients.
Ammar Kalia, The Guardian, 15th October 2019This legal comedy is superb: laced with the right amounts of misanthropy and sentimentalism and unafraid of a textbook set-piece such as, tonight, a bungled speech. The relationship between Katherine Parkinson's barrister and Will Sharpe's bewildered pupil, meanwhile, is thawing nicely.
Jack Seale, The Guardian, 8th October 2019Defending the Guilty: review
Though the plot is engaging, it feels as if it ends too quickly.
Jasna Mason, The Student Newspaper, 3rd October 2019The fate of the inept, self-obsessed barristers and their lowlife clients didn't seem to matter much when the six-part comedy Defending The Guilty started a couple of weeks ago.
Who cared which of the four trainees landed the coveted post in chambers? They were all as selfish and shallow as each other. But after three episodes, a more compelling story has started to take shape as shy student barrister Will (Will Sharpe), who wanders around in a millennial daydream with his headphones on, has accidentally fallen in love with a juror.
Katherine Parkinson is especially good as his needy pupil-master Caroline, ordering him to call her 'Mummy' and fetch her sticky pastries.
The show is based on the autobiography of a real-life legal trainee, Alex McBride, and although some of the incidents do feel too closely cribbed from real life, it is all shaping up to be much better than it originally seemed.
Worth a second look.
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail, 2nd October 2019Caroline (Katherine Parkinson) and Will (Will Sharpe) viciously butt heads with Lady Justice once again, this time over the case of an elderly victim and an unrepentant thug. The real aggression, however, is reserved for the pupils' competition back at chambers. What new dirt has Danielle dug up on Pia?
Ellen E. Jones, The Guardian, 1st October 2019A welcome fresh outing for Will Sharpe, now vouchsafed his own star vehicle. Defending the Guilty is, at first sight, a slightly flimsy paint-by-numbers legal comedy, with all that normally entails - gentle humour, misunderstandings, pious frettings over diversity. Its game is raised by a modicum of sharp writing and some glorious comedy performances, chiefly from Sharpe and Katherine Parkinson, and I'm a reluctant convert thanks to some decent surprises.
Euan Ferguson, The Observer, 22nd September 2019