Review: The Promised Land is the Best Bible-Based Show I’ve Ever Watched.

It’s been a bad past few years for Hollywood as time and again their movies keep flopping, streaming services keep getting oversaturated with absolute crap, and it seems like the film industry is just dying overall thanks to a Google-run company with a little red play button as its symbol. In the faith-based film arena, things haven’t necessarily been doing much better, as from get-go, many Christian movie companies seem to have forgotten how to make a plot that gets the audience invested rather than pumping out films that feel more like propaganda pieces. The movies and T.V. shows that have been doing well in that industry and don’t feel like propaganda are overall few and far between and much of it is produced by questionable sects of Christianity at best or by pseudo-Christians at worst (such as Mormons). Because of this, social media sites such as YouTube have been taking over the entertainment industry, allowing private citizens and independent artists and studios a platform to showcase their ideas to the world. One example of how this has been working to Christians’ advantage is the YouTube series The Promised Land. Released earlier this year, the show follows Moses and his family as they journey to the titular Promised Land and try to keep Israel from imploding. It’s shot similarly to The Office and is meant to be a Bible-based workplace comedy series, with Season 2 currently in the making. I recently finished this series and it’s exactly what Christian entertainment needs.

The main thing I like about the show is that it doesn’t take itself seriously. One of the things that I’m not a fan of with a lot of Christian media is that it takes itself very seriously, and while there’s a time for that, the problem arises that when theological or historical mistakes are made, people don’t catch on to it. They’re expecting the show to be an accurate representation of what the directors are trying to adapt to the screen. It’s basically a similar problem that movies like Kingdom of Heaven have where many things look historically accurate and there may be some parts that are accurate so when mistakes are made, people naturally assume that those mistakes aren’t mistakes and they actually happened.

This can make these types of shows dangerous because they give people the wrong idea. Meanwhile, with shows that are supposed to be comedies and don’t do that, there’s some leeway. If a mistake is made, people might not catch on to it, but it decreases the chances of them taking it seriously. For example, no one would think A Knight’s Tale is a historically accurate movie for this reason. It’s a supposed to be a comedy and while there are a few parts that are historically based, there are anachronisms galore, some more obvious than others. Even to the casual viewer, there are red flags telling them: “This movie isn’t historically accurate! Don’t use this for your history class!”

The Promised Land does this very well. While it does try to stay faithful to the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Numbers and does a good job of it, it balances that with its overall jokey nature. Storylines are added in for pure comedy, some references to modern things are made in a manner that works with the show, etc. All of it just works, and I like how many of the jokes are direct references to verses in the Bible that you otherwise wouldn’t understand unless you’ve read the Bible.

The other thing I like about this show is that fact that the jokes feel natural. They’re not forced or trying to shove religion down your throat. It feels very much like if The Office was set in Biblical times. The things that happen are acted out so well that it actually feels like it could have happened three or four thousand years ago.

The last thing I’ll mention is the overall quality of The Promised Land. I’ve seen some YouTubers try to adapt things like books, fanfics, etc. into a series on YouTube with varying levels of success. Some are okay for what they are, albeit low budget, while others are just terrible and even with the low budget make you wonder if anyone was actually trying. However, The Promised Land looks like a series that you would find on streaming services like Hulu or Netflix with how well done it is. The costuming is good, the way it’s shot is better than most of the stuff I’ve seen in the past few years, the acting is superb…I could go on. It’s honestly astonishing to me how an independent group on YouTube could make this great of a series.

Until next time,

M.J.