After its first couple of seasons, I know looking back that I'd have happily listed Sex Education as one of my favourite things Netflix had ever made – it was a deliberately different show with a brilliant central hook, acted terrifically by a largely young cast and some standout experienced stars.
Sadly the second half of its run let me down badly with a loss of focus, but that didn't stop me gaining a newfound respect for former child star Asa Butterfield, who remained a fun and inventive presence at the show's centre. Now he's back with another new Netflix series, with a massively different tone and topic.
As you'll have seen above this paragraph, Unchosen just got its first teaser trailer, and it didn't take very long to establish the fact that this looks like a much more tense and even scary affair than Sex Education. Butterfield will play a young member of a closed religious community, devout and even crazed in his faith.
Molly Windsor seems to be the actual main character of the show, though, as his young wife. She's potentially not quite as deep a convert, and according to Netflix's material about the show, she'll find her dedication to the community tested when she meets a convict on the run and finds she's magnetically drawn to him.
That sounds fairly potentially compelling already, but one further bit of casting cements Unchosen as a lock for your watchlist. Ex-Doctor Who Cristopher Ecclestone, who's one of the UK's most brilliant actors but doesn't actually appear in that many projects, plays the leader of the religious community. He looks like he's performing with real zeal, and it won't be a surprise if his character has a dark side.
The show looks seriously interesting, and since Netflix won't even say when it'll start streaming, beyond a simple "coming soon", we're fairly guaranteed to get another, longer trailer in the next couple of months. Hopefully that one brings a release date with it for this tense project.
