It’s got amazing names attached, from Christopher Eccleston to Siobhan Finneran – but the new Netflix drama starts off workmanlike then goes downhill. Why would these stars ever sign up?
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nchosen is set in the world of a Christian splinter sect. Everyone lives simply in grace and harmony, following Christ’s teaching of peace and love for all humankind, with men and women sharing equally in domestic and other labour. They exist as shining lights for what is possible when you set aside the patriarchal nonsense and other accretions that gather around religions. Every episode is a delight and nothing much happens because everyone is living such a good and godly life.
I jest! Unchosen is not here to break new ground. It is here to deliver by-numbers drama that has inexplicably attracted the talented likes of Siobhan Finneran and Christopher Eccleston to its cast and you should proceed with your expectations lowered.
The Fellowship of the Divine is a cult, led by Mr Phillips (Eccleston, whose face, it strikes me as I watch Mr P deliver his first sermon, is so much the face of a cult leader that I have been subconsciously assuming Eccleston must be one in real life, and acting just his side-hustle ever since I first saw him in Cracker). Anyway, in the Fellowship, the women nurture and do as they’re told by the men, and the men pray and provide and tell each other they can do what they want. The sect keeps itself separate from the evil modern world full of “the unchosen”. They have landline phones and electric kettles, but beyond that, technology (“pipelines of pornography and sewage to our souls”) is forbidden.
