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.

Article

Culture

Fun & play

Holidays/vacations

22 August 2025

5 min read

How were your holidays, Molly-Mae?

How to deal with the disappointment of influenced vacations

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

Where next?

@mollymae

The thrill has gone. So gone. Holidays, once the highlight of the year have become bottomless seas of disappointment. When the luxury travel bestowed on influencers like Molly-Mae Hague amounts to “not done one fun thing”, how can holidays become joyful again?

Travellers’ tales have always dappled dark through the light. Whose heart does not go out to the Wedding Guest, cornered into listening to the Ancient Mariner’s story of seafaring mishaps in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem? Even St Paul found some of his Eastern Mediterranean journeys trying: “in toil in hardship, through many sleepless nights, through hunger and thirst, through frequent fastings, through cold and exposure.” Taking a different tack, Chaucer’s seasoned pilgrim the Wife of Bath, with Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago under her belt, advised seizing whatever opportunities for pleasure your location afforded:

“I made my visitaciouns, To vigilies and to processiouns, To prechyng eek, and to thise pilgrimages, To pleyes of miracles, and to mariages.”

Admittedly the scope for miracle plays and marriage proposals is limited in a travel landscape of overcrowded airports beset by delays, ‘lively’ cruises and plane rage. Other people and sky-high expectations are travel’s inescapable bugbears.

A mother of two who left a Mediterranean cruise early, because of fellow passengers’ drinking and raucous behaviour, according to reports had paid £3,000 for a fortnight’s family holiday. Working out at less than £72 per person, per day it’s difficult to know how the cruise company could cover the costs of providing full board and sailing around the Med, let alone supply staff for the allegedly tardy vomit cleaning on deck.

Cheap travel always comes at a price. But we wish it didn’t. BBC’s Race Around the World is wildly popular because it presents budget travelling with the tedium edited out, or at least fast forwarded. And with medical teams and security advisers on hand, to protect contestants from serious harm. This is a world away from shoestring travel as we know it: getting transport and arriving at times of day nobody would choose, waiting in the freezing cold or boiling heat and weighing up the loos’ likely state against your growing desperation. Budget airlines let us travel amazing distances at, sometimes, amazing prices, but the hard currency we pay in is time, as protracted boarding, cabin bag size cat-and-mouse at the gate, peripheral runways and middle of nowhere airports, devour the hours.

But media exhortations to ‘see the world’ and digital nomad lifestyles, regardless of resources, airbrushes this reality away. Except when travellers fall ill having ‘forgotten’ or trimmed travel insurance from holiday budgets. Then their Go Fund Me appeals, complete with hospital bed photo, are treated with derision, echoed by rafts of comments delighting in the misfortune and pain that ‘serve them right’.

Into this moral soup of self-pity for our own travels’ pitfalls, scorn for those even less successful at having a good time than we are, and envy towards travellers who buy their way free of inconvenience, land influencers such as Molly-Mae and sister Zoe-Rae.

Instagram’s illusionary nature does not diminish the hard work and talent needed to create an endless stream of beige outfits and bikinis by the pool image

In July Molly-Mae lamented to her 8 million Instagram followers that she had “not done one fun thing all summer”, despite sharing trips to Budapest, Dubai, St Tropez and Disneyland Paris. Notwithstanding flying by private jet, Disneyland Paris was at times “unenjoyable” due to the school holiday weekend crowds, and visitors surreptitiously taking phone photos of the influencer and recently reunited partner, boxer Tommy Fury. A more recent trip to the Isle of Man in a new £86,000 motorhome, acquired by Tommy so their two-year-old daughter Bambi could experience more “normal” holidays, also had its challenges. The “spontaneous” journey from Cheshire “literally booked the ferry to the Isle of Man an hour before we needed to leave”, was marred by ferry delays, navigating to the camp site, and their toddler’s vocal displeasure at a disrupted routine, resulting in Bambi being “so unhappy”.

Also in July, Molly-Mae’s fitness influencer sister Zoe-Rae, told her 645,000 followers that Uluwatu in Bali proved so disappointing, she and husband Danny abandoned their anniversary trip after 48 hours. Zoe’s chief lament was the difference between their experience of the resort and what social media had led them to anticipate. “We came here with high expectations... Lovely places to eat and beaches, and lovely gyms and coffee shops. But I don't think the reality of Bali is shown much at all, and I do think it is down to a lot of influencers posting the more luxury side of things.” Zoe’s “lot of research” was not enough to bridge the gap between the reality of being in densely populated Indonesia, ranked an upper middle-income country by the World Bank, with wide income disparity and welcoming up to 16 million tourists this year, and Instagram’s filtered images.

For sisters who make a very good living from social media, it is intriguing the staged nature of Instagram images did not overly inform their travel decisions. Influencers’ shots of travel perfection come from, sometimes physically, pushing out people and necessities of everyday living from scenes. What is presented as relatable or aspirational is fantasy.

Instagram’s illusionary nature does not diminish the hard work and talent needed to create an endless stream of beige outfits and bikinis by the pool images. But the aspirational, five-star lifestyle this is supposed to represent feels like something dreamed up by marketing or algorithms, rather than a true representation of individual desires. Influencers’ flurry of bizarrely timed ‘luxury’ travel should be read more as work contracts than recreation.

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong deliberately created the world of media mogul Roy family to be bland, beige, corporate luxury, with each under-appreciated home around the globe looking like the other. Community, local culture and people other than the Roys go unacknowledged. In an event with Armstrong, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said the phrase “boring as hell” is no accident, and that to live life purely for our own pleasure and gain, without connection to others, is a living hell.

The rise of ultra endurance sport holidays such as the UltraSwim 33.3 in Croatia, recreating the distance of swimming the Channel, marks a trend for travellers seeking transformation rather than relaxation from time off. Humans evolved through facing challenge and adversity.

And such transformation is not only the preserve of the sporty. Last year on a tour of eastern Romania’s painted monasteries, a monk showing us Neamt Monastery’s candlelit, skull-filled catacombs said travel taught two things: life is lived in days not years, and to learn to be patient and accepting of each other, however long it took. If Molly Mae’s family fancied taking their new motorhome on eastern Romania’s authentically surfaced roads, discovering the joy in each finite day, and finding locals’ and fellow travellers’ inherent worthiness, rather than irritants to be airbrushed away, that’s a post we could all relate to.

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