The Chosen - Season Four

Jonathan Roumie, arriving at the London premier on Monday - image: Mary Carson.

A new season of The Chosen, the popular TV drama series about the ministry of Jesus and his disciples, is about to be released next week (2nd February). This will be season four. To herald this, there was a huge premiere last week (23rd January) in one of the big cinemas in Leicester Square. Cast members were flown over from the US for the full red carpet treatment with flashing lights, microphones and razzmatazz.

It is just the first two episodes of Season 4, however, that will be getting a short cinema release, otherwise as usual the Chosen is to be found on streaming platforms like Amazon Prime or you can download it direct from the Chosen website.

At the London screening, I happened to meet a friend of the main actor, Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus.. He is a film music composer, but now discerning his vocation as a Benedictine monk. He told me he had been friends with Roumie for many years. They were part of the same parish in Los Angeles when they were both struggling in their Hollywood careers and working as Uber drivers. He said that his friend had already played Jesus several times before the Chosen, and felt even then that somehow this was part of God's call on his life. And Roumie does a marvellous job in the way he portrays Jesus on screen, showing his humour and humanity, enabling one to see why such a motley band of men might be attracted to follow such a man.

The opening episode for Season 4 lays the seeds for the future development of the story. Judas, who comes from a business background, is starting to rebel against the hardships of the missionary life, and what he sees as the time they waste on menial tasks when they could be getting on with spreading Jesus' message.

The script writers of The Chosen are ingenious in the way they manage to integrate the well-known teaching of Jesus with the development of the plot and characters. Over the first three series for example, we have seen how unkind Simon Peter (Shahar Isaac) has been towards Matthew, (Paras Patel) the former tax collector, whom he feels is not worthy to be an apostle. Matthew is thus very upset when in this episode, Jesus chooses Simon to be the leader of the apostles, giving him the name Peter. It feels to Matthew as if Jesus is endorsing Simon's unkindness to him. Jesus however, challenges Matthew, asking him if he has apologised to Simon about his ruthlessness to him when he was a tax collector. Matthew admits that he hasn't, but this is because he didn't think Simon will forgive him, so it would be pointless. Jesus gently encourages him to do this anyway, reminding him that forgiveness is a gift not a right. Matthew agrees and goes to ask Simon Peter's forgiveness. This is not granted. Furious, Simon Peter complains to Jesus that Matthew should dare to ask this when he has done so many wrong things to him. He then enumerates seven of these. This cleverly leads into Jesus' teaching about forgiving seven times seventy seven. This lesson is particularly apt with all that is going on in the Middle East at the moment - showing how lack of forgiveness can escalate into the horrific cycle of retribution and killing we see in Gaza, for which there seems to be no end in sight.

LINK

The Chosen UK website: www.thechosentv.co.uk has all the latest news about The Chosen in the UK and Ireland, including; church resources, how to watch The Chosen and our merchandise shop.

Released in the UK and Ireland on 1st February.