House of David (2025) s1e01

Courtesy of Prime Video

Last night I wrote a review of the first part of this series and then, just as I was about to hit publish, got struck by a Blogger glitch that magically deleted all your work in a way that means that you can't get it back. So apologies that this isn't very good, but I've now missed the slot I had to write this and the details are fading fast.

Having recently acquired rights to The Chosen Amazon Prime have just released a new series on Jesus' most famous ancestor, King David. While this stands as an entirely separate production, the connections between the two go well beyond that. Series creator Jon Erwin, best known for a couple of relatively big faith-based hit films I Can Only Imagine (2018) and The Jesus Revolution (2023) is friends with The Chosen's showrunner Dallas Jenkins and even admitted to consulting with him on House of David in an interview with my friends Peter Chattaway. And The Chosen's Jonathan Roumie played The Jesus Revolution's charismatic leader. Meanwhile Erwin's co-director Jon Gunn is best known for another popular faith-based film The Case for Christ (2017).

Yet right from the start House of David brings in other creative influences as well. The show has a very different feel to The Chosen. There's something about it that feels more, well Old Testament.*

More will appear here shortly, please bear with me.

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*Whilst I usually prefer the term Hebrew Bible, in the modern vernacular being a bit "Old Testament" has come to convey a sort of larger than life violence in some circles, so I'm using that term in the relevant places on this occasion.