Who is he, and what does he want? Those two questions drive Messiah, a 2020 American drama series from Michael Petroni in which a stranger gathering followers in the Middle East becomes a problem for an intelligence officer who trusts nothing she cannot verify.
What is Messiah about?
A man appears and people begin to follow him. He speaks calmly, draws crowds, and is soon being described as the promised Messiah, a claim that travels far faster than anyone can check it. As the movement around him grows, so does the unrest, and what began as a matter of belief turns into a matter of politics and security. A wary CIA officer takes up the case. Her job is to establish where he came from, who stands behind him and whether the following he has built is the work of a holy figure or of a skilled fraud deceiving the people who trust him. The series moves between those who believe, those who doubt and those who simply want the disruption to stop, and it holds its central question open: the viewer is given the same incomplete evidence as the investigators.
About the cast
Michelle Monaghan and Mehdi Dehbi head the cast, joined by John Ortiz and Tomer Sisley. Melinda Page Hamilton, Stefania LaVie Owen, Jane Adams and Wil Traval complete the main ensemble, a group large enough to show the story from several sides at once. Michael Petroni is the name credited at the head of the production.
Context & significance
Messiah is listed as drama, mystery and thriller, and each label fits a different layer of it. The thriller is the investigation; the mystery is the man's identity; the drama is what his arrival does to ordinary lives. The series is an American production released in 2020, with episodes of around 43 minutes, a length that suits watching two or three in a sitting. Its subject is the meeting point of religion, faith and politics in the modern world, and it treats that ground as a setting for suspense instead of an argument for any one position. Reception among viewers has been warm, particularly from audiences who enjoy stories that withhold easy answers.
Watching Messiah on Ktime
Messiah can be watched on K-Time with a Persian dub or with Persian subtitles over the original audio. This page is free to read; to play the episodes, log in with your K-Time account. Menus, search and the player are all in Farsi, as the service is designed for Persian-speaking households outside Iran.