How does a man become Voltaire – the Giant of Thought, the Master of Blasphemy — whose struggles will give birth to the French Revolution?
This page opens with the synopsis supplied by the programme’s makers. Everything after it is our own.
How did Voltaire become who he was? One of the world's greatest thinkers, known for his wit, an advocate of freedom of speech and religion, whose writings shaped the course of the French Revolution.
Voltaire in Love is a four-part drama series that explores Voltaire's early life and evolution. It reveals aspects of the gifted philosopher's life that have receivedless attention: Voltaire the adventurer, lover, man of justice who had an ambiguous relationship with royalty.
In his permanent quest of questioning the status quo, he finds accomplices, loving women and friends, some of whom will not always be faithful. And he is dealt many blows including imprisonment and being exiled to England.
Voltaire in Love is a modern and timely series that depicts an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, a visionary, an influencer of his time. And still relevant today.
The series opens on a deathwatch, and on the gossip surrounding it. A crowd has gathered because Voltaire is dying. He has vomited all night; the doctors say he will not last the day. Some of the people waiting travelled a long way for this.
"He has done a lot of harm to our society and he will do more."
"What are you doing here if you don't like him?"
"I came to tell him face to face."
The series earns that opening. Its Voltaire is a man whose enemies could not keep away from him, and it is a great deal more fun than anything about an Enlightenment philosopher has any right to be.
How he became Voltaire is the question the title asks, and for most of these four episodes the answer is Émilie du Châtelet. She was a mathematician and a physicist, and she translated Newton. Their years together at Cirey were a working relationship as much as a romance, and the drama has the sense to write her as a scientist rather than a muse.
The literary politics are gloriously petty. In one early scene a rival works himself into a fury because Voltaire has declared Shakespeare the god of theatre, with not a line on Racine and nothing on Corneille, before landing on what actually stings: "And even worse, nothing on me. Voltaire doesn't know me!" These were people who could have one another imprisoned over a pamphlet, and frequently tried.
Under the comedy the stakes never drop. Voltaire was exiled, jailed in the Bastille, published anonymously, fled repeatedly, and made a fortune on the side so that he could afford to go on doing it. Whatever fed into the Revolution was worked out by people who were being watched, and who knew exactly what it cost to be wrong in public.
Directed by Alain Tasma, written by Georges-Marc Benamou and Henri Helman. In French with subtitles. It begins in the 1720s, in a France where a sharp sentence could ruin you and a sharper one could make you immortal.