Testament (2025): One Accord [s1e03]

This post is part of a series looking at Testament. Spoilers throughout

It's hard to think of another episode of a TV show that introduces quite so many new characters as "One Accord" -- the third episode of Testament. Of course, some of the characters are not so much new as re-imagined. Most people watching the show will know about (Pontius) Pilate and (Herod) Agrippa who appear in the early scenes. Both deviate slightly from the norm, and in a good way. 

Pilate is certainly tougher in many Jesus films (looking at you The Chosen) and there's a sense of everyone around him, including his "high minister" Caiaphas, being slightly in fear of how he will react to any given scenario and a nervousness about his mere return to the capital hangs over the entire episode. He may have seen military action, he may not, but people jump to attention when he orders them to do something.

For his part, Agrippa is physically quite slight, and much less camp, than most of his previous on-screen counterparts. This modern reincarnation has significantly cut down on jewellery and silks. There's still a sense of irresponsibility, privilege and a love of the high life. He's an essentially non-serious character. He has the air of someone who went to a leading British public school and appears on their alumni page even though he's not really done much with his life.

Then there are the characters who have been in the background up to this point in the series, but really come into their own in this episode. Susanna who is starting to get her voice heard among the followers as well as giving support to Mary; Matthew taking over the accounts following Judas' demise; Thomas, who gets to give his side of the story for a change, to Stephen (pictured above) who is a little wary following last episode's conversation with Caleb; and Mara whose motives are seeming decidedly mixed. Mara's there to spy for Saul, but there's a sense in which she is starting to get drawn in. 

Finally there are the characters from around the peripheries of the Gospels who make their first, but no doubt their last appearances in today's episode. The two most obvious ones are Joanna, who in the Bible is married to Chuza, one of Herod's servants. Having provided Jesus with financial support in the Gospels (Luke 8:3), we learnt in episode two that her ability to support the rapidly expanding Jesus movement is faltering. Now we actually meet the women herself as a servant around Herod's table. Whether we will see her with the apostles at any point remains to be seen.

And then there is Barnabas, who makes a memorable appearance in the closing moments of the episode following a brief scene early on. He first crops up in Acts 4:36-7 and goes on to play a fairly key role in Acts and we get the same elements here -- he makes a sizeable financial contribution and is renamed by the apostles (here just Peter) for being an encourager. It was all the more memorable for me because Barnabas bears some physical resemblance to a bouncer / fixer in the previous scene .

I find these scenes, exploring the practicalities behind Jesus' followers pooling their money, fascinating. This is rarely explored much in other productions. For one thing that's a tendency which goes back to Luke himself. He introduces passages such as Acts 2:42-47 and  Acts 4:32-37 which talk about the disciples selling their possessions and sharing the proceeds, but really just uses them as summary section breaks before moving on to the next act in the story.

Here, though, the series really gets into what that might mean in practical terms. We see them selling their belongings from smaller items at the markets and car-boot sales through to the sons of Zebedee selling their entire business. We even see Andrew's failed attempt to raise a few pounds (?) by flogging his rundown fishing boat. And then there's Barnabas using his wealth more strategically to meet their growing needs.

There are a few other moments that really grabbed my attention. In particular a momentary encounter (pictured above) between Saul and Peter (unable to hold off preaching even for a few days). Both men are being held in check by others in their wider communities. Jesus' other disciples (championed by an increasingly cautious and unyielding Simon Z) seem to want to lay low while Pilate is in town, but Peter insists they should continue. "It is literally what Jesus told us to do". Saul is soon to be told by Gamaliel "your recklessness will be your undoing" who pressures him into taking a more clerical role for a short while to allow things to blow over.

While Peter has sort of agreed not to continue preaching, he continues with low level preaching to small crowds in alley ways. And it's there that he and Saul make eye contact for the first time. Saul commands him to stop. Peter sprints off. A chase ensues. It's not how either man is typically portrayed, but again it underlines in a way that so few Acts films have done, the urgency of what's a stake, and the passion and compulsion that is felt on both sides. Saul's other scene which is heavy on the dramatic licence is a scene where he visits Jesus' now empty tomb. He meets one of the "sentinels" who had been assigned to guard it, still processing some kind of shock and apparently seeking to do so with alcohol. I like the way Paul flashes his Imperium citizenship card at this point, not least because he has the sentinels spear mere centimetres from his face when he does so.

And then there's Mary, putting herself at risk in a quite different way from her male counterparts. For Peter and the others, it's the risks of preaching with words. For her it's preaching with actions. There's a suggestion that she has been involved in sex work in the past (which in some ways is a little disappointing), but here for once, that world is portrayed as exploitative, where women are often vulnerable, at risk from violent men and frequently short on options. Mary rescues an addict called Dana, not a name from the New Testament as far as I'm aware, but it will be interesting to see if it's some kind of twist on a biblical character nevertheless.

Testament (2025): The Fishermen [s1e02]

Spoilers throughout. Image source: KOVA Releasing

Episode 2 of Testament is called “The fishermen” and it opens in the immediate aftermath of Caleb getting healed, and with Peter and John’s preaching getting them arrested. The term “The fishermen” is used here quite casually, as if it’s still in formation. It’s used once almost as a term for the twelve, and once as a slightly tighter way of grouping together Peter, James, John and Andrew (who wears an appropriately nautical Aran sweater from the first scene to the last).

As with the opening episode there’s as much focus on the goings on within the temple establishment as with the disciples. The news of the miracle, and the return of their Jesus problem, is causing a good deal of consternation. My friend Peter Chattaway has a great interview with Testament’s director Paul Syrstad where they go into the fact that Caiaphas getting surprised that stories about "that dead imposter" are cropping up again just as he was beginning to think they’d gone away.

Caiaphas' main concern seems to be that Pilate will find out and come down hard. Pilate doesn’t know about this new set of stories about Jesus. “He can’t find out that we have a rumoured resurrected messiah on the loose gathering a following" Caiaphas hisses at one point "He’ll think they’re building an army”. Is this why we see one of his staff among the new followers of Jesus? Or is it a sign that even within the temple some are starting to reject the party line.

Not that the party line as we might suspect given the way the temple hierarchy is often portrayed. For example, it’s good to see Gamaliel among the temple authorities, not only offering a Pharisaic perspective but also bringing a more relaxed approach to the problem. One of the things this show has done well (so far) is portraying varying responses and motives within the temple hierarchy.

It’s also interesting seeing them acknowledging their differing perspectives with the kind of jokey teasing you find in these kind of contexts. “Ah Gamaliel, thinking of joining us?” one of the Sadducees asks. “Maybe in the next life” he retorts. It’s a nice piece of writing, which breathes life into these relationships and makes them feel more real. It gives that sense that they speak together often to get business done, rather than conveying the information in a way that feels more expositional. It shows a confidence among the writers that they don't feel they have to explain every single thing for the viewer.¹

Another example of this might be there comments about the continuing unexplained absence of Joseph of Arimathea. I'm assuming this is a plot point that’s going to re-emerge later in the series, but it's happy to let the audience to wait before it unpacks everything that such a teaser provides.

Meanwhile, slightly on the outside of the temple clique, Saul is stirred by Caleb's healing, his agitation driving him to further bout of furious studying. Eventually he hears about Peter and John's release and charges off in a burst of zealoty fury. 

Having brought Saul in from the start (as a way in to the characters in the temple), there's something of a gap between these early chapters of Acts and when Saul pops up in the text. So it's nice to see the writers filling this gap by developing the world around Saul/Paul that's only hinted about in the New Testament. The most obvious example of this so far is the appearance of Saul’s sister and her son, whom we know about from Acts 23:16.

Perhaps with greater significance to the rest of the show, there's also a visual suggestion that Saul is suffering with some kind of pain or other affliction in his head. It seems like something more than his typically uptight personality. Is this a reference to Paul's "thorn ...in the flesh" that he mentions in 2 Cor 12:7? I can't imagine it's a reference to the idea that Paul's vision of Jesus was down to something like temporal lobe epilepsy, though it would certainly be intriguing if it were.²

Down in the cells, Peter's also seems to be suffering. If the clues for Paul's physical affliction were visual, the indicators regarding Peter's issues are both auditory and visual. We get to hear inside his head (a point of sound shot) the muffled sounds of other people in the room talking, which Peter is unable to decipher. Is he undergoing a panic-attack here? Certainly it seems stress-induced. Moreover, a visual indication of his stress is given by a flashback to the courtyard of the High Priest and his denying he knew Jesus on the eve of his crucifixion. 

This nicely tees up his later speech in front of the council. There can be an assumption that having been restored, on the beach, after the resurrection, in John 21, everything was plain sailing for Peter, particularly after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1. What this scene does is humanise Peter, because even if he no longer carries the guilt of his denial, he still has to overcome the fear that lead him to deny Jesus in the first place, and this time it's in front of the High Priest himself, not just his servants. And perhaps his subsequent burst of confidence and speech in front of the bench is the biggest story of what happens in this episode.

There are a few other points I wanted to make. Firstly, I think Mary Magdalene already establishing herself as my favourite character, with her calm rational head and her ability to persuade her more hot-headed male colleagues to see sense. There are hints of her former life here as well, though I'm a little unclear whether the implication is of some form of drug addiction or something else.

The show also does something interesting with the man who Peter healed, Caleb. We know from other shows how these characters are meant to react with unbridled joy and devotion. Yet we also know from the Bible that despite many people being healed by him on numerous occasions, only 120 were left in the upper room in Jerusalem. Caleb's reticence to get into trouble by joining the fledgling movement (“I’m not prepared to throw my new life away on somebody I don’t know!”) is a realistic reminder that Acts depicts following Jesus as a costly enterprise.

Yet the disciples – even without Peter and John's prompting – decide to take on an additional cost: funding the ongoing work by selling everything. I like that there's a reference to Joanna's previous funding of Jesus' ministry, but I didn't catch a reference to Mary Magdalen doing this. Still this decision to go all in (a principle I've always found challenging and which seems sadly forgotten among most within the church's present incarnation) as well as the news of John and Peter's release lead to jubilation. The episode closes with a bouncing huddle of fishermen, barbers and new followers in the dark singing at the top of their voices.³

You can watch my interview with director Paul Syrstad, and the actors playing Saul (Eben) and Stephen (Charlie Beavan) on YouTube.
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1 - For those who are unsure what this means, the Sadducees of Jesus’ day are thought not to have a belief in the afterlife, whereas Pharisees did.
2 - See for example D. Landsborough's "St Paul and temporal lobe epilepsy" Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. 1987 Jun, 50(6):659-64, available online at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1032067/pdf/jnnpsyc00553-0001.pdf.
3 - Despite several attempts I couldn't decipher all the lyrics here. All I got was  “The kings and the rulers are/we’re(?) together once again, against the LORD,,,". Can anyone fill in some of the blanks?

Testament (2025): Something New [s1e01]

Over the years there have been several attempts to adapt the Book of Acts; a number of modernised biblical narratives; and a handful of British biblical films, but never (as far as I'm aware) an attempt to combine all three.

Into that void steps Testament, a new streaming series from Angel Studios, directed by Paul Syrstad, who directed 2022’s The Parables Retold. The series relocates the story of the birth of the early church in what is almost, but not quite, the modern day. The events of this first episode take place in a city called Salem, which on the one hand evokes Jerusalem, but also draws on the atmosphere of the London locations where it was shot, and the accents of its predominantly British cast.

Yet it’s also not quite the modern world as we know it. For one thing, the Roman Empire never fell and has come to be known as the Imperium. For another, Jesus is not a figure from the ancient past, but from just weeks before the story is set. There are other details that are different in this new world as well: the temple never fell, and remains an important seat of power within Salem, ever under the watchful eye of the Imperium; and the digital revolution is yet to take place — there are no smart phones, messaging and internet surveillance.

The resulting atmosphere feels a little like what might have emerged if Mike Leigh had directed His Dark Materials. Its sense of otherness and that gateway alternative possibilities opening up in the midst of inner-city council flats. Syrstad has spoken of how the show’s Brutalist architecture “doubles down on the Imperium regime and the oppression that was being felt”.¹ It’s a world not of tunics and sandals, but of grimy blocks of flats and people living on the edge.

Among those living on the edge is Stephen who becomes homeless after a disagreement with his mother early on in this opening episode. By introducing Stephen earlier in the story than he appears in The Acts of the Apostles, the show uses him as one of the audience’s ‘ways-in’ to the story. We very much see the unfolding events from his perspective, as an outsider being drawn into a nascent movement. He senses something has changed, he experiences it even, and yet he’s still trying to explain it and grasp some sense of what’s happening.

This is quite a bold creative decision, because it leaves the audience (initially at least) on the outside too. We’ve not experienced what Stephen has, so it leaves us in a more curious, more dispassionate place. And it follows on the heels of a number of other significant choices, most notably to leave Jesus himself not only off camera, but entirely absent (physically, at least). Moreover the focus is not so much on his disciples, at least in this initial episode. They are strangers to Stephen, his curiosity combines with a certain wariness on his part, and ours too. For the audience, our distance from the crucial events that underpin the story’s is only increased by the camera cutting away just as Peter’s Pentecost sermon begins. Stephen hears it and is drawn in, but we are going to be made to wait to find out what has happened.

Stephen is not the only character who’s introduced earlier in Testament than in Acts as a way of bringing the audience into the midst of some of the story’s key players. We’re also introduced to Saul and his mentor Gamaliel amid the inner workings of the temple elite. Saul has a passionate heart and a steely look in his eye that seems so innate that it will be fascinating to see how this develops as the series goes on. Gamaliel’s affable, laid-back persona seems critical here too. Each member of the temple authorities has a different approach and Gamaliel’s more conciliatory nature adds some crucial depth to what might otherwise revert to a rather one dimensional portrayal of the apostles’ opponents.

So the scene is set for what looks like it will be an interesting series. Syrstad and his co-writers Faith Syrstad and Kenneth Omole have managed to fashion a world that feels real and create a scenario that has avoided some of the potential pitfalls of their chosen source material. Moreover the show feels like it’s more interested in exploring the text than serving up pat answers. This is not a sequel to The Chosen, but translated into the modern era. It has its own artistic vision and deserves to be treated on its own terms.

Testament is available on the Angel website and app from 8th June (subscription required).

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1. "Testament director Paul Syrstad on the problems with filming the book of Acts." - interviewed by me, on my YouTube channel.

I dieci gladiatori (Ten Gladiators, dir: Gianfranco Parolini, 1963)

I actually sat down to watch I dieci gladiatori thinking it was a non-biblical Italian peplum as part of my research into Italian cinema. Having seen a lot of the biblical pepla, I've been feeling the need to ensure I understand the broader context. Imagine my surprise then when it began to emerge, even as early as the credits, that this was, if not a full blown New Testament film, it was at least a partially blown Roman-Christian epic.

The first clues are laid down during the credits sequence which indicates its determination to grab onto the coat tails of Quo Vadis (1951 but possibly 1913 also). Not only does it star Dan Vadis as the leading gladiator Roccio, but the filmmakers even seem to choose Vadis-esque English names for some of the other cast members, such as Susan Paget, Margaret Taylor (eerily similar to the stars of Quo Vadis, Deborah Paget and Robert Taylor). Neither name appears in the IMDb credits, which supports my suspicion that they were just featured so prominently to catch a glimmer of Quo Vadis's glamour.

The similarities with Mervyn LeRoy's 1951 epic only deepen the film continues. After some opening fight scenes between the titular ten and various Roman soldiers we're introduced to Nero and realise that while Gianno Rizzo's performance is a little more restrained it's only a matter of time before Rome begins to burn and the finger of suspicion falls on the Christians.

While none of the main characters are Christians we do get another staple of the Roman-Christian genre, a scene of a church meeting in the catacombs (pictured above). This is all part of plot by one of Nero's advisors Tigellinus to frame, and thus eliminate another, Lucio Vero. Vero, played by director Gianfranco Parolini himself, is a pagan (half way between Vadis's Marcus Vinicius and Spartacus's Crassus). Tigelinus and his men drag him to the catacombs and then accuse him of being a Christian so he ends up in the arena.

But there is the tantalising shot above of this church meeting. We're not told who this man is, but the implication (based on how the equivalent scene is put together in Vadis) that this is if not actually St. Peter, someone that will make you think of Peter. Perhaps a leader in Peter's mould.

The other thing that is interesting about this scene is the dialogue. The snippet of the church service we hear says (according to the subtitles) "Our consciences are full of our sins. And even if one day we still fall prey to human violence, we have to accept this violence." It doubtless sounds better in Italian, but it's not something that seems particularly reminiscent of anything. More interesting is Tigellinus's withering comment afterwards, "Filthy bums who worship a thief who died on a cross". Even on the lips if an enemy of Rome that's quite a shocking for an Italian film to say about Jesus. Remember Pasolini had been prosecuted for La Ricotta's lack of reverence to Jesus just a few months before

But there's another strange thing about the films portrayal of Christians. Later as a group of Christians are about to be sent into the arena we see another church-type meeting, again being led by an older man with white hair (above). Here the arrangement of the characters is less formal (more of a circle than in rows facing him as before) and he's speaking as the camera pans by, but it's a different man, (although, even more than before, he resembles Vadis's Finlay Currie). Is either man meant to be St. Peter? Are they meant to be te same man or not?

But perhaps the most explicitly Christian image of the film comes after this arena scene (which leads to the burning of Rome) Seeking to blame the Christians, Nero starts rounding them up and persecuting them. Caught up in proceedings is Roccio's friend Livia (it's a bit ambiguous whether the two are, or have been, lovers, or if they're just good friends). And so Nero and starts tying them and her to crosses and torturing them and so we get the rather striking image below.

Dieci gladiatori was released as Ten Desperate Men at one stage in the United States. It's super camp and there's a too much gymnastics, body oil and beef cake on display to give much weight to the proceedings even with some fairly graphic (for the time) on display. This gives the film a rather uneven feel, it almost feels like two different films. The ten gladiators seem far closer in spirit to the merry men in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) than the comrades in arms in Spartacus (1960). Those parts are fun, but seem so alien to today's portrayal of men in historical epics. On the other hand, the body count is quite high and the implied violence combines with the onscreen violence to bring a dark edge to proceedings. Nevertheless, the scenery looks good and the costumes, (aside from being a little skimpy) look splendid.

This mix of men pals and and even mix of violence, fun and gymnastics is not unusual for Parolini. Six years later he directed a war movie called 5 per l’inferno (Five for Hell) which featured soldiers with a number of gimmicks. He's best remembered though for directing two of the Sabata trilogy starring Lee van Cleef. The same year as 10 Gladiators, he also directed Maccabean epic Il vecchio testamento (The Old Testament), his second film with a somewhat misleading, biblical-sounding title following Sansone (1961).

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If you want to see this film, it's currently available to view with subtitles on Peplum Paradise's channel on YouTube. They've upscaled it which is gives a cleaner version of the film than has previously been available, (It does mean that some of the screen grabs I've used from the film look a little bit odd if you look too closely).