Richie Johns, who runs the Nashville Christian production company Studio 523 with his wife Bethany, isn’t surprised that people mistakenly think his new documentary-style sitcom about Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness is written by Jews.
“Comedy is naturally unifying,” he told JNS. “The reason it feels Jewish is because it’s informed by the Torah.”
“The Promised Land,” which streams on YouTube and is available on Angel Studios, is “coming from the Israelites leaving Egypt, wandering through the wilderness, getting to the edge of the promised land and then being forced to wander,” Johns said.
“We’re not trying to pretend to be anything that we aren’t,” he told JNS.
Johns said some viewers might just know a bit about Moses and the Ten Commandments. But “the more you know, the funnier it gets.”
The series modernizes the biblical stories.
When Joshua tries to keep people from touching the mountain (Sinai), he has to deal with a group of teenage boys who kick a soccer ball past him. Miriam dresses as a man to go to “law school” under Moses (and is the only student to score perfectly on a pop quiz). Korah, meanwhile, runs leadership training like an overzealous middle manager trying to prove his worth.
One member of Korah’s training squad is Chisisi, an Egyptian soldier who survived the Red Sea and is trying to pass as an Israelite until he can get back to Egypt.
Johns told JNS that the writers are “reverent to God, but we’re irreverent to the characters sometimes.”
He added that Studio 523, a “family endeavor” that he and Bethany work on with another married couple, is part of an exercise in trying “not to take ourselves too seriously.”
“We’re making a comedy show,” he said.
The show has 100 crew members, a cast of 29, hundreds of extras and 26 animals. The Johnses’ dogs are called Esther and Melchizedek.
Though it’s a comedy show, Johns told JNS that “some of the most meaningful conversations I’ve ever had have been the late nights, or in a production trailer, or in the production office, or off-set when somebody just needs to vent.”
