---
title: "The Chosen"
year: 2019
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-chosen"
fi1m_id: "the-chosen"
imdb_id: "tt5622316"
tmdb_id: 85077
wikidata_id: "Q140685154"
fi1m_score: 65
critics_reviews: 2
published: "2026-09-24T22:40:05.548824+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-24T22:40:19.083007+00:00"
region: "IE"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Chosen (2019)

Created by Dallas Jenkins · 1h 00m · IFCO 12 · Action & Adventure, Family, Drama

## Identity

The Chosen

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/the-chosen
- **Type:** Series
- **Fi1m ID:** the-chosen
- **IMDb ID:** tt5622316
- **TMDB ID:** 85077
- **Wikidata ID:** Q140685154
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5622316/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/85077, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140685154

**Fi1m score: 65** · Critics: 2 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* The disciples squabble like flatmates and the Son of God has the patience of a supply teacher

> Dallas Jenkins’s series retells the Gospels as an ensemble drama about the people around Jesus, and the squabbling apostles are its best idea. It is warm, sincere and often slow, and looks like what it is: television paid for by its own audience.

## Synopsis

Capernaum, Galilee, in the first century, under Roman rule. Simon Peter (Shahar Isaac), a fisherman deep in debt to the empire, works the lake on the Sabbath and strikes a dangerous bargain with the Romans to keep his boat. His brother Andrew (Noah James) wants him to stop. Matthew (Paras Patel), a Jewish tax collector working for Rome, is shunned by his family and walks the streets with a soldier for a guard. Nicodemus (Erick Avari), a Pharisee visiting from Jerusalem, tries and fails to drive a demon out of Mary Magdalene (Elizabeth Tabish) in the Red Quarter. Into this walks a carpenter from Nazareth, Jesus (Jonathan Roumie), who calls her by her name and begins gathering his first disciples while the priests in Jerusalem ask who he is.

## Review

Dallas Jenkins has taken the four Gospels and turned them into a television serial, with regulars who bicker over supper. *The Chosen* began on 21 April 2019 with eight hour-long episodes and has now run to six seasons. Jenkins created it, directs it and writes it with Tyler Thompson and Ryan Swanson, and the idea is simple: tell the story from the edges, through the fishermen, the tax collector and the nervous Pharisee, and let Jesus walk in late as a stranger. It is a good idea. The show is sincere, well cast where it counts and, for long stretches, flat, and we came away fond of it and only occasionally gripped.

The apostles are the reason to watch. Shahar Isaac plays Simon Peter as a hothead with debts, a man who fishes on the Sabbath because Rome wants its money, and Noah James’s Andrew spends most of the first season apologising for him. Paras Patel gives Matthew, the tax collector nobody will sit with, a fussiness and a literal mind that the writers plainly enjoy, and his scenes with Isaac, two men who loathe each other and have been told to share a table, are the best written in the show. Nobody here is a saint yet.

Jonathan Roumie has the impossible part and plays it by doing very little. His Jesus is a carpenter with dust on his hands who laughs at his own jokes and gets tired in the evening, and when he is asked a hard question he asks one back and lets the silence sit. Erick Avari, top-billed as Nicodemus, plays the Pharisee as a clever man who has just seen something his cleverness cannot explain, and his scenes are where the first season finds what unease it has.

Petros Antoniadis and Akis Konstantakopoulos shoot the interiors by lamplight, all amber and brown, and the streets in hard white sun, and James R. Cunningham’s Capernaum is dust, rough stone and low doorways. Pamela Incardona and Leila Heise dress the disciples in layered, faded wool that looks slept in and the Romans in red that does not. All of it is competent and none of it stays with you; the first season has the even, shadowless look of a television film. Dan Haseltine and Matt S. Nelson’s title theme, a stomping blues over an animation of grey fish in which one turns gold, is the liveliest minute in most episodes. Their score under the drama is less welcome. The strings arrive a beat before every moment of grace, in case we had missed it.

The pace is the larger trouble. John Quinn and Adam Lutge cut each hour to give every conversation room, which is right for a show about people learning to live together and wrong for the Sanhedrin, where men in fine robes explain Roman politics to each other at length. We were bored by the fourth of these scenes and impatient by the sixth. The dialogue also has a habit of stating the theme: somebody says aloud what the scene has already shown, and a show that trusts its actors’ faces does not trust ours to have read them.

And then it gets us anyway. The first episode ends with a woman who has spent an hour being called the wrong name hearing the right one from a stranger in a tavern. Elizabeth Tabish plays Mary Magdalene throughout as someone braced for a blow, and when the blow does not come her face simply gives way. We were moved, more than we expected and a little cross about it, because the strings were doing exactly what we have just complained of and it made no difference. Roumie underplays it and Tabish does the rest.

Against the screen Gospels before it, this is the modest one. Pasolini’s *The Gospel According to St. Matthew* (1964) was fierce and used the text alone; Zeffirelli’s *Jesus of Nazareth* (1977) was a pageant with a famous cast. *The Chosen* is a hangout show, closer in shape to a workplace drama than to a Passion play. Watch it at home, two or three episodes at a sitting, and give it until the fishermen are all in the same boat before deciding. Believers have already found it and do not need us. For everyone else, it is a gentle, talky, occasionally lovely series about twelve men who cannot agree on anything, which is a more familiar story than it sounds.

*Fi1m score 65, published 24 September 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is The Chosen worth watching?**

*The Chosen* is worth watching for anyone who wants a gentle, talky retelling of the Gospels through the people around Jesus, and we scored it 65. The squabbling apostles are the best of it, Roumie underplays well, and Elizabeth Tabish's Mary Magdalene moved us more than we expected. The Sanhedrin scenes are slow and the score signals every moment of grace a beat early.

**How long is The Chosen, and what is it rated?**

*The Chosen* has episodes of about 1h 00m and is rated 12 by the IFCO in Ireland. It is an action & adventure and family series.

**Where can I watch The Chosen in Ireland?**

*The Chosen* is not on any streaming or rental service in Ireland at the moment. It is available in 40 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

**How violent or frightening is The Chosen, and is it suitable for children?**

*The Chosen* carries a UK 12 certificate and is mild for most of its length, a drama about fishermen, tax collectors and priests arguing over supper rather than an action series. The first season includes a failed exorcism and a woman living in a red-light quarter, handled without gore. Younger children may find it slow; teenagers and adults will be fine.

### Reviews we read (2)

- **The AV Club**, Luke Y. Thompson (B-): The reviewer finds the season engaging but episodic, with its theatrical presentation not always justified. They praise Dallas Jenkins’s structural experimentation and varied visual choices, while noting that scenes can feel stagey. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/the-chosen-season-4-review-big-screens-for-tv-jesus-1851326643)
- **Collider**, Michael John Petty (70/100, inferred): Petty finds Season 4 engaging, with rising political tensions and strong relationships among the disciples, though the season is weakened by some overextended personal subplots. He especially praises the disciples’ imperfect, believable relationships and their conflicts. [Read](https://collider.com/chosen-season-4-review/)

## Details

- **Created by:** Dallas Jenkins
- **Creator:** Dallas Jenkins
- **Director:** Dallas Jenkins
- **Writer:** Dallas Jenkins, Tyler Thompson, Ryan Swanson
- **Cinematography:** Akis Konstantakopoulos, Petros Antoniadis
- **Editor:** John Quinn, Adam Lutge
- **Music:** Dan Haseltine, Matt S. Nelson, Matthew S. Nelson
- **Production design:** James R. Cunningham
- **Costume design:** Leila Heise, Pamela Incardona
- **Producer:** Chad Gundersen, Chris Juen, Jamie Elliott
- **Cast:** Erick Avari as Nicodemus; Jonathan Roumie as Jesus of Nazareth; Shahar Isaac as Simon Peter; Elizabeth Tabish as Mary Magdalene; Paras Patel as Matthew; Noah James as Andrew; George H. Xanthis as John; Abe Bueno-Jallad as Big James
- **Runtime:** 1h 00m
- **Certificate (IFCO):** 12
- **Release (Ireland):** 21 April 2019
- **Genres:** Action & Adventure, Family, Drama
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CVj41dtkIA

## Where to watch in Ireland

Not streaming, renting or buying in Ireland at the last check.

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, FI, FR, GB, HR, HU, ID, IL, IN, IS, IT, JP, KR, LT, MX, NO, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, SE, SG, SI, SK, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *The Gospel According to St. Matthew* (1964): Pasolini shoots the text word for word with non-actors and no comfort at all
- *Jesus of Nazareth* (1977): Zeffirelli’s long, stately serial, the last time television did this on a grand scale
- *Jesus of Montreal* (1989): An actor playing Christ in a Passion play starts behaving like him; sharp and sad
- *Rome* (2005): The empire from the other side, with the same taste for dust, debt and squabbling men
- *Silence* (2016): Scorsese’s Jesuits in Japan ask what faith costs when nobody is watching

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/the-chosen