Highly Recommended: The Chosen

by Rebecca Bynum

The Chosen is a beautiful rendition of the life and teaching of Jesus. Bible scholars and Urantia book readers may complain of various inaccuracies and liberties taken with the story, but to my mind, the writing is inspired and truly captures Jesus’ good-humored personality and makes plain the ordinary humanity of the Apostles. The writers take a lot of liberties in giving the Apostles each a back story and they re-arrange the Gospels so each one joins the cause as a result of a miracle. They also take great pains to include every earthly race, which would normally bother me as being historically inaccurate, but in this case, it works, illustrating how Jesus lived his life for all mankind. Matthew is depicted as being slightly autistic and even that works. The acting is superb. The creation of first-century Palestine is remarkable. Much of the second season is filmed in my home state of Utah in an area south of Provo with the Uinta mountains in the background standing in for Mount Hermon.

Seasons one and two are streaming on Amazon Prime. Season one is also on Netflix. Season three, which begins with the Sermon on the Mount, is showing in select theaters.