House of David (2025) s1e02

Having given us a fairly good introduction to the major players in episode 1 of House of David, episode 2 ("Deep Calls to Deep") helps us get to know some of the other leading characters. We met Mychal (Saul's daughter), Abner (Saul's ...enforcer?) and Eliab (David's eldest brother) in the first episode, but all become a bit more prominent in this episode.

But before any of that, we are going back even further into the past, to be introduced to a new character, Nitzevet (Siir Tilif ), David's mother and to the time just before she was killed. Biblically-speaking even Nitzevet's name is from later sources, so this whole sequence is a combination of later tradition and imagination, but it's a good way to introduce us to what makes David (and to a lesser extent Jesse) tick. Nitzavet and David walk out to see an usual star configuration when a man starts rebuking her, so she tells him that her son's name will be remembered long after the man is forgotten.

This is one of two moments where Nitzevet is shown to be particularly in tune with God. Shortly after this prophecy she recites words that are familiar to many from the Psalms ("You knit me together in my mother's womb" Psalm 139:13-4). I find this interesting because it's a fairly consistent trope found in many Jesus films that his mother is shown teaching him some part of what will become known as his teaching, as the filmmakers are doing similarly with Nitzevet. 

We also find out that at least part of Jesse's anger towards his son is because it was David's disobedience that caused his mother to die at the paws of the lion (the one that David kills at the end of the opening episode). We then return to the "present" (or what sees to be the show's present) where David's heroics get a mixed reception when he returns to the house. Eventually though, David manages to persuade Eliab (Davood Ghadami) to help him become a soldier. And so the two of them go on a trek and find some time to get to know each other.

The only real biblical story we get here is Saul having problems with his mental health. This was actually one of the best bits of the David-related stories in the 2013 series The Bible. Here Saul's lack of wellbeing has been brought on by Samuel's words. Mychal (Indy Lewis, pictured above) is nursing him and she's pleased when he regains consciousness, but is clearly worried about the bigger picture.

Also worried is Abner (Oded Fehr) who suggests flexing the army to keep Samuel in line. But Saul knows the truth. As revered as he might be, Samuel, as Israel's former judge, is also popular and his words hold sway with the people too.We also meet Mychal's sister Merib, and Joav/Joab the soldier Mychal likes to flirt with

Lastly, we also get to see how the five Philistine kings react to news of Saul's unexpected victory over Agag. These scenes are interesting precisely because the biblical authors seem to have so little interest in them. The Philistines seem to have posed an existential threat over the Hebrews for several generations, but aside from the occasional moment of dialogue, there is very little for the screenwriters to go on.

For example, the council scene here, which is pure fabrication (not that there's anything wrong with that) could be a reasonable reflection of how these men related to one another. I'm reminded of the scenes with the five families discussing external threats in The Godfather (1972), or it might not resemble things even in the slightest. We just don't know.

I think the grand multi-storey buildings we see both in Philistine territory and in Israelite territory seems a little more built up than I would expect from a couple of nomadic nations. The seafarers turned settlers on the one hand, and the former slaves turned desert wanders on the other seemed to have quite quickly developed the kind of expertise to build such impressive architecture. And yes that's a very pedantic nitpick, and the show and its creator have been quite clear that they are trying to evoke something a bit more mythological, which means they deserve a degree of latitude, but also, I seemingly can't resist pointing these things out.

In any case, a show exploring these characters – barely even two-dimensional in the text, even if they might not get significantly more developed as the show progresses – has a lot of potential to see things from the other side. It's a blank canvas, of course, and it's difficult to know what created the vacuum that saw both the Hebrews migrating to the area from the south at a similar time as the Philistines arrived from the west, and how the Philistines might've viewed the Israelites. Certainly the presence of another group of warlike people trying to settle in the area will have caused some consternation.

There are two scenes that particularly cut through, both involve one of the lead characters entering into a walled city for the first time.

The first of of these is a wedding scene in Bethlehem. David is playing his lyre as part of the wedding band, but he does manage to speak to and enchant Mychal. The chemistry between them bodes well for the development of their relationship later. It's interesting too that Mychal dances here - in spite of Joav's protestations, yet soon she will object to David's dancing when the Ark of the Covenant enters Jerusalem. There's a couple of mentions in this scene of David being a musician and/or a poet. I wonder how (else?) the program will develop that?

The second such scene is Eliab and David reaching the desolate village that Jonathan investigated in part one. There's some nice paralleling between this scene and the earlier one: the sense of something dreadful having happened, the camera movements and shot framing creating a nifty call back to Jonathan's discovery of those same sights.

Speaking of sights, we get a couple of drone shots here of the scenery, which looks fantastic and somewhat different for a biblical epic. It turns out that rather than being shot at Atlas studios in Ouarzazate, Morocco or Capernaum studios in Forth Worth Texas, House of David is filmed in Greece (according to Variety). It's nice to see a different location used, particularly one as striking as this. I think the landscape also adds nicely to that mythological feel.

Overall then, the story doesn't move on greatly in this episode. Instead the episode spends time investing in the characters. This is a tricky job because there are a lot of them and we need to have a good sense of them before the action really gets going. So my hunch is that its worth investing the time here, even if it's a little slow. Hopefully the action, or rather the biblical scenes, will pick up a bit more in episode three.