Review

Culture

Film & TV

1 February 2024

6 min read

When Jesus walked in Leicester Square

As the The Chosen’s latest series premieres, Natalie Garrett analyses the TV show’s appeal.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

A group of actors walk together at a film premiere

Jonathan Roumie, centre, with the cast of The Chosen.

So, I’ve met Jesus twice before. Over 20 years ago, I joined the cast of The Life of Christ at Wintershall, the epic outdoor drama experience that takes you through the story of Jesus’ life (and it’s still going strong). As well as being Crowd Person 176, with glorified tea towel on head, I was cast as the bride at the wedding at Cana. Apart from Jesus, the rest of the cast were local, normal people (as in not professional actors) and I rather shyly attended the first rehearsal knowing no-one. I had been sitting on my own for a bit when Jesus walked in and caught my eye. He walked straight over to me and shook my hand, “You must be Natalie,” he said. For just a moment, I forgot that he was an actor and I thought, “You really are Jesus, you know me by name!” But then I remembered that I was the only new addition to the cast, and he was just a really nice guy welcoming me to the company.

Some eight or so years later, I was involved with the Oxford Passion, a Passion play written for and produced by Creation Theatre company in Oxford. I helped write the script and played the role of Mary Magdalene. The actor, Tom Peters, who played Jesus in that production was incredible. As an actor and as a Christian, it was an extraordinary experience, sharing some powerful scenes with Jesus. Each night for several weeks, I had to watch my beloved Christ being crucified all over again. I wept deeply, every night.

Then fast forward to Monday 22 January 2024, and I’m at the cinema UK cinema Premiere of season four of The Chosen in London’s Leicester Square and I see Jesus walk the red carpet. Surreal.

So, there I was, in all my finery, lurking about, hoping to get a selfie with Jesus.

In case you haven’t come across The Chosen, it’s a ground-breaking historical drama series. Created, directed, and co-written by filmmaker Dallas Jenkins, it is the first multi-season series about the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Primarily set in Judaea and Galilee in the first century, the series centres on Jesus and the different people who met and followed or otherwise interacted with him. The emphasis is on portraying the “authentic Jesus” through the point of view of the people who spent time with him, asking the question, what did it really look like to be a follower of Jesus? It has quickly become a highly successful crowdfunding project, with episodes viewed 700 million times and a big vision to reach a billion viewers by the end of season seven.

Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in The Chosen, says,

“Our fanbase was entirely Christian at first, but because of its popularity the show has attracted people from all faiths and no faith to the character of Jesus. We’re trying to really portray his message of love and tender mercy.”

To raise awareness for the show, which can be streamed on Netflix and Amazon Prime (or for free on The Chosen app), season four was launched with a cinema release in Leicester Square. So, there I was, in all my finery, lurking about, hoping to get a selfie with Jesus. And I had to pinch myself. When did Jesus become a world-wide celebrity with people whooping and whistling and jostling for his attention? Well, it happened when he rode a donkey into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday, but not so much in the last 2,000 years, especially not in recent years in the West.

What have the creators of The Chosen got so right that millions of people tune in to binge watch the narrative of the gospel story?

First up, Jesus laughs. A lot. He smiles and he hugs people. He is intensely personable and bloke next door-y (he’s not very good at ball games for one thing). But he also, when necessary, exerts huge personal authority. There is a confident, courageous, generous, humility to him that is hugely attractive. When the going gets tough, you think, he’d be good to have around. But also, he’s great company around the dinner table, telling stories and listening, too.

Because of the way the story is told, through the eyes of those who knew Jesus, we get drawn into the personal dramas of the Twelve Disciples as well as a wider group, including several women. It even includes some Romans, who are clearly the “bad guys” but drawn equally plausibly as the other more sympathetic characters. In the lives of these people, we find the domestic reality of the human experience – working hard to put food on the table, relating to family members, suffering illness and even miscarriage. And then we see the difference that it makes to have the Son of God around. And that’s the hook, that’s what means the viewer becomes deeply invested in the show because it turns out the people in the Bible aren’t super spiritual giants, they are people just like you and me. They struggle with the day-to-day realities of life, they’re confused, and they mess up. And then they meet Jesus.

It’s a huge risk creating a show when everyone knows how it ends. As we watch, even the early seasons, we know where the narrative arc is going. And yet, somehow, we still want to find out what happens. Because: we are invested in the stories of the Roman Centurion who looks as if he might come over to the light side; we’re keen to find out how Simon Peter and his wife get over their marital difficulties; we’re cheering for the success of the olive oil business set up by Zebedee (that’s James and John’s Dad) along with the help of some shrewd businesswomen who are also numbered amongst The Chosen.

When I see a dramatized version of any book I’ve read, I usually get quite angry – “that’s not what he/she looks like! That’s not how they talk!” And dramatizing part of the bestselling book of all time, the four Gospels of the Bible, is quite a risky choice for a TV programme. But I recognise the Jesus in The Chosen as the Jesus I know and love. And there is no higher accolade I can give than that.

The extraordinary success of the show is that millions of people have watched it and been drawn in. Millions of people have invested not just their time and viewing commitment, but also their own money. The show is entirely crowdfunded, and the show’s makers are deeply committed to building community around what they’re doing. Fans are invited to participate in the crowd scenes (being the 5,000 who get fed, for example) and there is almost as much behind-the-scenes content produced as the show itself. There’s a buzz around what they’re doing and it’s spreading way beyond the homes of a Christian fanbase.

When Jonathan Roumie arrived for the season four premiere in Leicester Square, it was like a rock star had stepped out of the car, such was the reach and excitement around his portrayal of Jesus in The Chosen. For hundreds of years, Christian artists have used the creative arts at their disposal – stained glass windows, music, fine art – to try to convey the authentic Jesus to the world. In our time, TV programmes are the artform of greatest impact and the digital distribution now available to the makers of The Chosen affords unprecedented access to their material around the world, as they aim to dub it into 600 languages ensuring 95 per cent of people worldwide can watch it spoken in their native language.

Is it too soon to suggest that The Chosen may be the Sistine Chapel of our age? It’s certainly too early to try guess the impact that this cultural phenomenon will have on the world’s faith journey. But if the reaction on the red carpet at Leicester Square last Monday night is anything to go by, Jesus seems to be making a comeback.

Episodes 1&2 of season four of The Chosen are showing in UK cinemas from Thursday 1 February 2024 - with other episodes being released later in the month. This is the first time ever that a full season of a streaming TV show will be released exclusively in cinemas.

Review

Culture

Music

27 February 2025

6 min read

The biblical undercurrent that the Bob Dylan biopics missed

In the best of Dylan’s work is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A colorful mural depicts the eyes of Bob Dylan staring to the side.

Dylan mural, Minneapolis.

Nikoloz Gachechiladze on Unsplash.

The Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown begins with his arrival in New York and concludes with his performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. He begins the film as a complete unknown, as he arrives with no backstory to share or, where he does, one that he has invented. He ends it as a complete unknown, because he consistently refuses all the boxes or labels in which others want to imprison him.

This aspect of Dylan’s life and career has also characterised many of the earlier biopics, such as 2007’s I’m Not There which features six different versions of Dylan as poet, born-again Christian, outlaw, actor, folk singer, and electrified troubadour. Suze Rotolo, his girlfriend throughout much of the time covered by A Complete Unknown, described the way in which he absorbed influences at this time like a sponge:

“He had an incredible ability to see and sponge – there was a genius in that. The ability to create out of everything that’s ﬂying around. To synthesize it. To put it in words and music.”

Focusing on this aspect of Dylan’s life and practice can, however, lead to a minimising of his upbringing and also to a misleading sense of brilliant but entirely disconnected phases – essentially a series of rejections – as having characterised his career. There are some important elements of Dylan’s life and ideas that are overlooked, underplayed or simply lost as a result. Many of these involve the particular expression of spirituality that has informed his work from the beginning.

As Rabbi James Rosenberg has explained: “Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24, 1941. He spent the majority of his childhood, including his high school years, in Hibbing, about 60 miles northwest of Duluth. His father and mother, Abram and Beatie, whose parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe, sent both him and his younger brother David to the local synagogue for their Jewish education leading to Bar Mitzvah at age 13.”

As a result, Dylan’s songs have from the beginning of his career been suffused with the phrases and imagery of the Bible; interestingly, not just the Hebrew Bible, but the Christian Bible too. Whether it’s the references to Judas in “Masters of War” and “With God on Our Side” or quoting Jesus in ‘the first one now will later be last’ (“The Times They Are A-Changin’”) or the Old Testament stories that feature at the end of “When the Ship Comes In”, wherever you look within Dylan’s lyrics the influence of the Bible is apparent.

Follow that thought with another which notes the prevalence of apocalyptic images (storms, hurricanes etc) and events (‘The hour when the ship comes in’, the moment when “The Times They Are A-Changin’” or the night when the “Chimes of Freedom” ring, for example). Then think from where images of apocalyptic events primarily derive in the Western imagination and you’ll be circling back to the Bible, and the Books of Daniel and Revelation in particular. That is of course what Dylan himself did following his born-again experiences in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, but the Bible was always the original seedbed for his images and ideas.

Then, look deeply into one of the most apocalyptic of his early songs – “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” – and you’ll see a manifesto to which he has held throughout his career and which illuminates his work in every decade and every change of direction within his lengthy career. The central character in “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” commits to walking through an apocalyptic world in order to tell and think and speak and breathe and reflect what he sees in order that all souls might see it too. In a much later manifesto song – “Ain’t Talkin’” – he puts it like this:

Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’

Through this weary world of woe …

Heart burnin’, still yearnin’

In the last outback, at the world’s end

Throughout Dylan’s career, he writes songs about people travelling through life in the face of apocalyptic storms seeking some form of relief or salvation or entry to heaven. So, what we have in the best of Dylan’s work is a contemporary Pilgrim, Dante or Rimbaud on a compassionate journey, undertaken in the eye of the Apocalypse, to stand with the damned at the heart of the darkness that is twentieth century (and then twenty-first century) culture.

It's actually all there right at the beginning in the song that he wrote for and sang to his hero Woody Guthrie:

I’m out here a thousand miles from my home

Walkin’ a road other men have gone down

I’m seein’ your world of people and things

Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings

Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song

’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along

Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn

It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born

(“Song to Woody”)

Dylan’s songs, from that point onwards, have documented where his pilgrim journey in the eye of the apocalypse has taken him; often with imagery of storms lighting his way. He has travelled the paths of political protest, urban surrealism, country contentment, gospel conversion and world-weary blues. On his journey he: saw seven breezes blowing around the cabin door where victims despair (“Ballad of Hollis Brown”); lightning flashing for those who are confused, accused and misused (“Chimes of Freedom”); surveyed “Desolation Road”; talked truth with a thief as the wind began to howl (“All Along the Watchtower”); sheltered with an un-named woman from the apocalyptic storm (“Shelter from the Storm”); felt the idiot wind blowing through the buttons on his coat, recognised himself as an idiot and felt sorry (“Idiot Wind”); found a pathway to the stars and couldn't believe he'd survived (“Where Are You Tonight? Journey Through Deep Heat”); rode the slow train up around the bend (“Slow Train”); was driven out of town into the driving rain because of belief (“I Believe in You”); heard the ancient footsteps join him on his path (“Every Grain of Sand”); felt the Caribbean Winds, fanning desire, bringing him nearer to the fire (“Caribbean Wind”); betrayed his commitment, felt the breath of the storm and went searching for his first love (“Tight Connection to My Heart”); then, at the final moment, it's not quite dark yet but he’s walking through the middle of nowhere trying to get to heaven before the door is closed (“Tryin' To Get To Heaven”):

The air is getting hotter, there's a rumbling in the skies

I've been wading through the high muddy water

With the heat rising in my eyes.

Everyday your memory grows dimmer.

It don't haunt me, like it did before.

I been walking through the middle of nowhere

Tryin' to get to heaven before they close the door.

(“Tryin' To Get To Heaven”)

Whatever the crises we face, whether personal or political, there’s a Dylan song that says there’s light at the end of the tunnel if you keep walking toward it and, whatever the song, there’s a depth of insight and compassion for those who are struggling along the way.

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