Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Chosen’ On The CW, The Hit Streaming Series About The Life Of Jesus

The Chosen has had an interesting history; the series, created, directed and co-written by Dallas Jenkins, was financed via crowdfunding, and it’s been licensed to numerous streaming services and linear networks since its debut in 2019. It is also available on its own streaming app and website, for free; donations to the nonprofit Come and See Foundation continue to fund the series. Its debut on The CW is the first time it’s been on one of the major U.S. broadcast networks.

THE CHOSEN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: After a long disclaimer about how the settings and characters in The Chosen may have changed, but “support the truth and intention of the Scriptures,” we see a man praying in front of a fire late at night. He coughs while he incants to himself.

The Gist: The man consoles his scared daughter by reciting a passage from Isaiah 43:1: “I’ve called you by name; you are mine.” Then a woman wakes up in bed, and sees the doll she held as a girl. But blood is on her hands; a man runs out, equally bloodied, and finds a Roman soldier. He’s screaming that demons live inside of the woman.

On the road to Capernaum, Rabbi Nicodemus (Erick Avari) and his wife Zohara (Janis Dardaris) are stopped by a Roman magistrate named Quintus (Brandon Potter). He’s looking to make a deal; if Nicodemus helps Quintus collect taxes from the Pharisses, he’ll make sure his fellow Romans leave them mostly alone.

Nicodemus’s message to his fellow rabbis in Capernaum is that they need to crack down on Jews who go fishing on Shabbat. As he’s visiting the local synagogue, he’s visited by a Roman soldier; he needs Nicodemus to exorcise demons from a woman in the Red Quarter named Lilith (Elizabeth Tabish). When Nicodemus does the exorcism — and he makes sure to let Gaius (Kirk B.R. Woller), the Roman soldier in charge, that he’s doing this as a favor — whatever is in Lilith is too strong for him to deal with.

In the meantime, two brothers, Simon Peter (Shahar Isaac) arranges street fights for his brother Andrew (Noah James) to wager on; in the latest, he loses when he gets sucker-punched by his opponent’s brother. They can lose their boat if they don’t come up with the tax money they owe; Simon goes out on his own on Shabbat to fish, but finds nothing, with a much larger merchant ship taking whatever haul there is for itself. A few days later, as Andrew is giving all he has to the tax collector, Matthew (Paras Patel), Simon chimes in that they have an arrangement with Quintus. The arrangement involves him snitching to Quintus about merchants catching fish on Shabbat.

Lilith, after coming out of her last bout with demons, gives her doll away to a local pub owner she knew as a kid. Then she contemplates throwing herself over a cliff, until she sees a bird flying overhead, and follows it away from the cliff’s edge. Distraught, she turns to booze to solve her problems, which is when she encounters a rabbi named Jesus Christ (Jonathan Roumie), who says she should be redeemed and her real name is Mary Magdalene.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? While The Chosen is touted as the “first multi-season series about the life of Jesus Christ” (more on that in a second), it has the feeling of the History Channel’s miniseries The Bible.

Our Take: So, here’s where you might expect the cynical TV critic to roll his eyes and tell you The Chosen is just for the faithful, but you’d be wrong. It’s a generally well-done production with solid writing and acting, and costumes and set pieces that actually manage to not look chintzy. What Jenkins has done with the show is make the story of Jesus accessible to the faithful and non-faithful alike by concentrating on the characters of the story and making them real people. There is plenty of Scripture present, but it’s not rammed down viewers’ throats.

Jenkins makes a good decision to not start the story with Jesus’ birth (though a short “proof of concept” film that depicts the birth was made in 2017, in order to get that crowdfunding). Jesus is already a grown man, a rabbi and a prophet who is wandering Judea and gathering followers as he gives his newfangled philosophies.

The apostles are doing their everyday jobs, and he likely uses some clues about them from the Bible to shape their characters. Matthew, for instance, is wealthy and fastidious, and he’s so ashamed of his job as a tax collector that he hires a local garbage hauler to get him to work as he cowers under a tarp. Simon and Andrew are depicted as humble fishermen, with Simon being the more scheming and industrious of the brothers. Other followers, like Mary Magdelene, are not initially seen in the most positive light.

Jenkins and his writers are certainly not depicting any of these people as heroic or tragic figures, at least not yet. They’re humans (even Jesus), with human issues and problems. Yes, their lives are extraordinarily spiritual, but there is earthly grounding in their behavior. And as the seasons go along and Jesus picks up more followers, and courts more trouble, the very human aspects of that will likely be what we see.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Jesus calls Lilith “Mary of Magdala” and recites Isaiah 43:1 to her, as her father once did. She sobs, and he embraces her.

Sleeper Star: We’ve seen Erick Avari in a million different shows, and the character actor brings some gravitas and credibility to the series as Nicodemus.

Most Pilot-y Line: Gaius says to Nicodemus, “Don’t worry, rabbi; we took out the other lowlifes to protect your delicate sensibilities.” Yeesh, those Romans get personal, don’t they?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Instead of being dense with spirituality, The Chosen takes the stance that the story of Jesus involved real and fallible characters. And that is what makes the show an entertaining story instead of a didactic narrative.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.