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

Belief

Creed

Politics

27 October 2025

7 min read

If a King can pray with a Pope, there's hope for MAGA and woke to talk

Once bitter enemies found peace through prayer - offering a quiet challenge to today’s culture warriors

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

The Pope and King Charles walk together from the Sistine Chapel

Royal.uk

Last week, King Charles met the Pope.

There was a part of me that wondered what Martin Luther, Thomas Cranmer, and even the young Ian Paisley would have of made it. Not much I imagine. The days of sharp theological barbs thrown between Protestants and Catholics over the mass, purgatory, the place of Mary, praying to the saints and so on are largely over. I imagine they had a cup of tea, admired Michaelangelo’s painting in the Sistine chapel and had a chat, but the main thing they did was to pray together - the first time a British monarch had met to pray with a Pope since the Reformation.

So this was quite a big deal. Prayer carries much more significance than tea. But why did it matter so much?

To make sense of it, you have to remember the history.

In the aftermath of the English church’s break from Rome under Henry VIII, later consolidated under Elizabeth I, one of the most influential books that emerged from the English Reformation was Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, originally published in 1563. Alongside the ubiquitous King James Bibles, copies were to be found in English homes up and down the country for centuries afterwards. The book was a grisly catalogue of Christian persecution down the ages, and a thinly veiled side-swipe at the author’s main target - the Roman Catholic church, or “popery, which brought innovations into the church and overspread the Christian world with darkness and superstition.” Back then, that was how most British people saw the papacy.

In 1605, a plot led by a group of English Roman Catholics to kill King James I of England (and VI of Scotland) and to blow up the Houses of Parliament was rumbled – the infamous Gunpowder Plot. For centuries afterwards on the anniversary of the conspiracy (until Health & Safety and modern squeamishness toned it down) the English lit bonfires, launched fireworks, and burnt effigies of the Catholic plotter Guy Fawkes to celebrate the deliverance of the nation from papal tyranny. At the time - and partly as a result of that event - Catholics were feared in England much as militant Islam is today in parts of the west – as a shadowy force infiltrating the nation from other European countries (mainly France and Ireland in this case), intent on changing the religion of the country, and imposing arbitrary and tyrannical rule on the population of Britain.

Later in the same century, the looming prospect of a Catholic monarch put Britain into a spin. Charles II had been restored to the throne in 1660 after his father’s execution during the Civil Wars. Charles’ own Protestant credentials were always shaky – a fear that was confirmed by his deathbed conversion to Catholicism in 1685, but at least during his lifetime he remained a Protestant Anglican. The real problem was the heir – Charles’ younger brother James, the rakish Duke of York who was most definitely a Catholic. The same fears of papal tyranny and arbitrary rule, taking away the precious freedoms of the British people were the talk of the coffee houses and broadsheets of the 1670s and 80s.

All the more remarkable then, that relationships between Anglicans and Roman Catholics have develop to such an extent that Anglicans (alongside other churches) were guests of honour at the late pope’s funeral and the inaugural mass of the new pope - and a King prays with a Pope.

So why have things changed so much?

Part of the answer is that times have changed. Europe is less obviously Christian than it was back then. The Christian churches have realised they don’t have the luxury of fighting over such matters. With Christian theology becoming less of a ‘public truth’ that held nations together (much as notions of freedom and democracy do for us today) arguments over it became less fraught and charged.

Another reason is the lengthy conversations that have taken place between churches in the ecumenical movement throughout the last century that have carefully been able to unpick the disagreements, clarifying what was and wasn’t at stake in the fights between Lutherans, Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox and others. These conversations haven’t solved all the issues. Different Christian denominations still disagree on a lot, especially today on issues like human sexuality and the like, but over time, they have at least brought clarity and a certain harmony to some of the historic disagreements. Anglicans still convert to Catholicism, and Catholics become Anglicans (or Orthodox or Pentecostals). The King and the Archbishop of York could not take Holy Communion with the Pope, but they could pray. I know from personal experience the depths of friendship that come when you recognise a brother or a sister in a Christian that you disagree with but in whom you can still recognise an essential commonality.

Another key part of the answer is that the Roman Catholic church has changed. Last year for example, the Vatican department that oversees relationships with other churches issued a study document called ‘The Bishop of Rome’. It was part of an ongoing conversation between the Roman Catholic Church and other world churches on the role of the Pope in the modern world. It talked about the Papacy as having a ‘primacy of service’, its authority linked not to the triumphant but the suffering Christ, of how the Pope offered a kind of ‘personal’ kind of leadership, Orthodox churches a ‘collegial’ form (led by groups of bishops) and the Protestant churches a form that stressed the importance of the whole community.

In other words, here was the Vatican asking other churches how the Papacy can be a help and support to Christians around the world. Back in the nineteenth century, in the first Vatican Council of 1869, the language was very different. The papacy was there by ‘divine right’, essential for the church, implying that other churches really ought to come back into the fold of the Church of Rome. The Roman Catholic church now seems to take a humbler, more generous stance which makes it possible for a King to pray with a Pope again.

It's a heartwarming story. We constantly lament today the polarised, fragmented and angry nature of our politics and our cultural debate. The ecumenical movement of the Christian churches over the last hundred years may not be the sexiest development in recent cultural history. It involved long and painstaking conversations, the building of friendships and relationships across suspicion, a willingness to see the good in the other even when you could not agree. Yet this combination of time, patient conversation and humility has yielded fruit.

In the seventeenth century, British Protestants saw Catholics as the deadly enemy seeing to undermine everything they hold dear - pretty much as some people do today see Muslims, or as progressives see conservatives or vice versa. Does this story hold out any hope of finding healthier ways to live together across our religious and political divides? Maybe. It's different of course because Catholics and Anglicans share the same basic faith, they recite the same Creed, they read (almost) the same Bible, they worship the same Jesus. With Islam we're talking about a different faith altogether. The ‘woke’ and the ‘MAGA’ people don’t seem to share much at all.

But yet we do share a common humanity. And with patience, conversation, a willingness to look for the good in the other, some form of peaceful co-existence, with freedom to debate, or even to change religion might become possible.

For that we can hope. And like the King and the Pope, pray.

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