by Paul Matheson

https://watch.thechosen.tv/page/season-3

The Chosen is a cinema-quality TV drama series that presents Jesus through the eyes of the people who knew him. It is available online (see the link above) and is free to view. It is based on scholarly research and is excellently written, cast, acted and directed. Jonathan Roumie’s performance as Jesus of Nazareth is deeply convincing.

As I explained in my reviews of Season 1 of The Chosen (Open House, March 2024) and Season 2 (Open House, June 2025), this series fleshes out the gospel narratives, offers additional contextual detail to gospel events, gives backstories to gospel characters and creates additional characters to develop vivid, absorbing storylines. The result is powerfully immersive, because it magnifies the emotional and spiritual impact of famous gospel scenes that we thought we knew, and leads us to see them afresh. Imaginative immersion into the gospel narratives has the psychological effect of turning them from the past into the present. It is akin to the ‘imaginative contemplation’ encouraged by Saint Ignatius Loyola, a way of praying that he describes in his Spiritual Exercises: imagining ourselves in the presence of Jesus in a scene from the Gospels. Praying with the imagination allows Christ in scripture to speak directly to us. Watching The Chosen has a comparable effect.

Paul Matheson is a policy advisor on equality, human rights and standards in public life.