TESTAMENT: THE STORY OF MOSES

Here's the good news first. The dramatized portions of this three-part Netflix series are excellent — captivating re-enactments that stick close to the biblical account, complete with subtitles showing the verses being played out. The Passover sequence, and the Christian commentators' parallel to Jesus as the sacrificial lamb, is genuinely moving.

The cost is pacing and, at times, perspective. The series stops repeatedly for commentary from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders and scholars, and while some of it is insightful, some of it drifts into feminism, determinism, and a troubling suggestion that God is more "destroyer" than redeemer. One episode edges toward putting Moses on the same level as Christ. The casting of the commentary panel is also uneven in places.

Watch it with your older kids and be ready to talk through what the commentators get right — and what they don't. That's the honest answer here.

Pharaoh has ordered every Hebrew baby boy killed. A mother hides her son in a basket on the river — and an Egyptian princess who has just lost her own child adopts him. Moses grows up a prince of Egypt, until a violent act of conscience sends him fleeing into the desert of Midian, where he builds a quiet life as a shepherd and husband. Then he sees a fire that doesn't go out, and a voice that changes everything.

Three stars means this: strong craftsmanship undercut by structural drag. The re-enactments themselves are the series' real achievement — well produced, biblically attentive, and dramatically engaging enough to carry the story on their own. Where the series stumbles is in stopping, again and again, to let commentators unpack what was just shown. Some of that commentary is genuinely helpful; some of it slows momentum and introduces ideas the drama itself never suggested. The result is an ambitious, watchable series that would have been a stronger one with a lighter editorial hand.

At its core, this series honors the biblical text. The dramatized scenes track Scripture closely: the courage of the midwives, Miriam's quick thinking, Moses' costly humility in Midian, and a Passover sequence the Christian commentators rightly connect to Christ. Faithful women drive much of the story forward, and the series treats that faithfulness as the virtue it is.

The commentary layer is where the trouble lives. Alongside solid biblical insight, some interviewees introduce feminism, determinism, and — more seriously — a portrayal of God as a "destroyer" rather than the rescuer Scripture describes. By the third episode, the framing edges close to placing Moses on the same plane as Jesus, and it soft-pedals the judgment God pronounces on Israel's own rebellion in the wilderness.

Worth naming once: the panel of commentators is composed for representational balance rather than theological alignment, pairing a female rabbi and a female Muslim spokesperson with traditional voices — a choice some viewers, particularly Orthodox Jews and many Muslims, may find unrepresentative of their own traditions.

Underneath the noise, the story still points where it should. Israel's lamb, its blood on the doorframe, is the shadow; the substance came later. "For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7).

This series gets more right than wrong: a moving, well-produced retelling of Moses that doesn't shy from pointing toward Christ. It also hands the microphone to some voices that wander from that same story's own meaning. Watch it with your older kids, talk through the commentary together, and you'll come out ahead. Worth the trip — ages 10 and up.