Amazon Old Testament Drama ‘House of David’ Lacks Fire and Brimstone: TV Review

variety.com:

Alison Herman TV Critic The Holy Bible is, if you think about it, the perfect source material for prestige TV. Particularly in the Old Testament, there’s sex and violence in spades, all rooted in universally recognizable IP.

And it’s all in the public domain, meaning there’s no need to deal with pesky fine print like legal rights. In fact, there already is a massive, Bible-based show: “The Chosen,” the four-season (and counting) drama dramatizing the life of Jesus Christ himself. “The Chosen” began as a crowdfunded short in 2017, and even now, its runaway success is easy to escape notice outside its core faith-based audience due to a distribution strategy that eschewed traditional platforms in favor of an in-house website and app.

No longer, though: earlier this month, Amazon MGM Studios announced a deal to exclusively stream the series, bringing the son of God to the shelves of the Everything Store.

The move, while dramatic, was more of a doubling down on a strategy Amazon was already pursuing. This week, streaming service Prime Video debuts “House of David,” a show that’s a prequel of sorts to “The Chosen” while being largely unaffiliated. (“The Chosen” is spearheaded by creator Dallas Jenkins and his company 5&2 Studios; “House of David” was developed by Christian filmmaker Jon Erwin and his studio The Wonder Project.