The Pen That Will Not Bow

Paris, 1718. Freed from the Bastille after his satirical verses mocked the government, young Francois-Marie Arouet, not yet Voltaire, encounters the great actress Adrienne Lecouvreur and learns what a pen can cost.

By The Yoreflix editorial team, written from the film itself. How we write about programmes

A short drama from Yoreflix Originals. In 1718 the young François-Marie Arouet is released from the Bastille, where he was held for circulating verses that mocked the French government.

He finds his way to the Comédie-Française and to Adrienne Lecouvreur, who has played to Parisian audiences more than seven hundred times, and into a circle where wit wins admirers and makes enemies in equal measure.

Written by Florian Hencher, who plays Voltaire, with Georgia Hirst as Adrienne Lecouvreur and directed by Nicole Sarah Fry. Rowland Stirling as Maurice de Saxe and Andrew Kinsler as Rohan Chabot.