It’s a hit television show with over 200million viewers and 770million episode views to its name but The Chosen is the biggest television show most people have never heard of.
First airing in 2019, this religious drama is the first multi-season television series to explore.
Since then, the show has returned to screens for three more series, each unpacking a different period of Jesus’s life.
Set in 1st Century Judea and Galilee, it stars Jonathan Roumie as , and includes Shahar Isaac, Elizabeth Tabish, Paras Patel, Noah James, and George H Xanthis among its extensive cast.
Created, directed and co-written by filmmaker Dallas Jenkins as a crowdfunding project, the show went on to become the most successful crowdfunded series in television history.
Here’s how and where you can watch the most popular TV series you’ve (probably) never heard of.
Season 1 of The Chosen can currently be found streaming on . This first season chronicles Jesus as he builds his group of disciples and ministry in 1st Century Galilee.
Among the figures gathered are Mary Magdalene, stonemason Thaddeus, singer Little James, and the fishermen Simon, Andrew, Big James, and John.
As he continues to gather his flock, Jesus performs his first miracle at the Wedding at Cana, before launching his public ministry.
Seasons two, three and four (plus 2021 Christmas special) continue to document Jesus’s life and times, meeting Judas Iscariot in season two (uh-oh), walking on water in season three, and mourning John the Baptist in season four (no spoilers, you’ve had enough time to read the book).
While only the first is available on Netflix, all four seasons are available to buy on .
And, with seven seasons reportedly planned in total, The Chosen is barely halfway through its epic (some might say Biblical) run.
Inspiration for the show came in the wake of director Dallas Jenkins’ 2017 flop The Resurrection of Gavin Stone – produced by his company, Vertical Church Films.
After bingeing different television shows, the creator realised that there had never been a multi-season series about Jesus told in quite the same way.
And so The Chosen was developed, in co-ordination with faith-based video streaming service VidAngel and its crowdfunding backers.
After raising $11million from over 16,000 investors, the show began to pick up steam, raising revenue through its licensing to streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon and The CW.
In addition to the show’s planned seven series, The Chosen also exists as two of tie-in novels (written by its creator’s father, and the author of fiction Left Behind, Jerry B. Jenkins) and a mooted animated series.
In 2022, the show attempted to drum up viewers with a sneaky marketing campaign in which the team defaced their own billboards – directing users to a website called ‘The Chosen Is Not Good,’ where, uh, Satan was waiting to tell people not to watch the show.
The Chosen is available to stream on Netflix and Amazon.
