In writing this review I am running up against the very best kind of dilemma, the kind which only really arises when I have to speak about the very best kind of thing. The challenge is to say just enough to convince you to check it out asap, without hyping it up to the point of unrealistic expectations once you do.
The Chosen is good. You should watch it.
How’s that? Enough said?
If you would prefer a little more, though …
The Chosen is the first ever multi-season dramatic depiction of Jesus Christ from the Gospels. If you have watched other cinematic versions of the life of Our Lord and found them less-than-thrilling, let me go ahead and stop you before you hit the snooze button. Whatever other version you’ve seen, this one is probably better.
(Dialing back the hype.)
Bold, inventive, and for my dollar reverent without lapsing into either rigid sanctimony or soppy sentimentality, The Chosen is just good, clean, nourishing watching. (And free to stream, by the way: more on this below.)
Impeccably acted and well put together—especially for being totally crowd-funded and produced outside the mainstream studio system—the emphasis in The Chosen is not upon exhaustively marching through the outward events of the story but upon building up the significance of key moments for the individuals involved.
And the characters are certainly individual. When we meet him, for example, Peter is a morally lax street brawler. Matthew is a well-dressed and semi-autistic public servant. Nicodemus is an unsuccessful exorcist working in an unsavory part of town.
If it all sounds like there might be a good scoop of artistic license mixed in here, that’s because there is. Perhaps even a majority of the subplotting so far is made up wholesale, which might be too much for viewers with no taste for fiction.
(Full disclosure: I am showing up a little late to this party. The series has just completed its second season, and so far I have only watched the first. Because I only started watching a few days ago. And am forcibly limiting myself to three episodes per sitting.)
(Dialing it back.)
Rather than finding the imaginary story material off-putting, I suspect most folks will find it at least tolerable, if not refreshing—especially those viewers already in command of a fair acquaintance with the surface elements of the Gospels.
By the bye, it should go without saying that these television episodes are not, in fact, the biblical texts: they are dramatic interpretations. If you find yourself unsure about whether some bit of the drama can actually be found in Scripture, instead of worrying about it, why not go ahead and indulge in some extracurricular devotional reading?
Anyway, I promised to say something about the series being free to watch, and here it is: it really is free. That is, you can watch it right now, not through any subscription service but simply by streaming it directly from the website or downloading the app.
So many folks have been so enthusiastic about the series, every episode so far has been entirely funded in advance by donations. What stronger recommendation do you want?
I mean really, though, what are you waiting for?With all gentleness and firmness, please allow me to make the following recommendations. Go ahead and click closed this review. Type The Chosen into Google. Dial back all expectations. And start watching The Chosen as soon as humanly possible.