Unchosen true story: Are there really 2,000 cults in the UK?

Netflix's new drama series Unchosen begins with the truly startling claim that "over two thousand cults exist in the United Kingdom".

It's a statistic that would make anyone bolt upright – suggesting that there are more cults in the country than there are Sainsbury's – although many viewers will, fortunately, have had little to no personal contact with such groups.

The figure is an estimate that comes from a BBC Radio 4 investigative reporting programme, titled File on 4: Am I in a Cult?, which spoke to experts about suspected activity in the UK.

Unchosen itself is a fictional story about an extreme fundamentalist Christian cult, which is largely separated from wider British society and maintains a patriarchal culture where women are expected to be submissive.

It's a set-up that resembles some suspected cults in the UK and abroad, which acted as reference points for the cast and crew when bringing this story to life. Here are the real-life influences on Netflix's Unchosen.

Unchosen true story: Real-life influences on Netflix drama

Netflix drama Unchosen is not based on a true story, but it does draw inspiration from real-life cases of suspected cult activity – including one that has garnered attention very recently.

In a synergistic piece of scheduling, Unchosen is being released on Netflix mere days after four-part docuseries Trust Me: The False Prophet became a global hit for the streaming platform.

The disturbing series takes viewers inside the community of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), located on the border of Arizona and Utah in the United States.

Like the fictional group in Unchosen, the devoutly religious female members are subservient to men, including self-described "prophet" Samuel Bateman, and mistrustful of outsiders with whom they rarely socialise.

The leader of the FLDS, Warren Jeffs, is a convicted child sex offender, but as shown in the latest documentary, some members of the church remain unwilling to renounce him as a prophet and their spiritual leader.

Jeffs himself is investigated in more detail in earlier Netflix documentary Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, whose director Rachel Dretzin is among a large number of people who believe the FLDS to be a "cult" (which she spoke about during her appearance on the You Can't Make This Up podcast).

In the US, cults are not illegal, so they cannot be disbanded solely on the basis of meeting the common indicators. Authorities can, however, prosecute members for illegal acts committed within the cult, as they did with Jeffs.

In an interview with The Times, Unchosen star Asa Butterfield revealed that Keep Sweet was one of the projects he watched in preparation for his role as cult elder Adam.

In the UK, the law is similar, with cult membership (or even leadership) being legal, but associated acts such as "fraud, false imprisonment or harassment" are punishable in the context of such activity.

Campaigners have recently called for the law on coercive control to be expanded to include cults or cult-like groups, as it currently only protects those in "intimate or family relationships" (via BBC News).

Coercion is considered a key effect of cults by former member and current academic Dr Alexandra Stein, who told File on 4 that a "fear and love dynamic" emerges in which followers become "controllable and exploitable".

Through this messaging, which amounts to "brainwashing" in Stein's words, members of a cult come to view life outside as dangerous, which often leads them to isolate themselves from their family and friends.

Stein also highlights a "charismatic and authoritarian leader or leadership group", a "steeply hierarchical structure" and an "absolute belief system" as hallmarks of a cult that one should look out for.

In the context of Netflix's Unchosen, the fictional cult depicted has a leader in Mr Phillips (Christopher Eccleston), a hierarchical structure that subjugates and coerces women especially, and rigid beliefs in themselves as "chosen" and outsiders as sinners.

It's clear that writer Julie Gearey has done her research in conveying the core tenets of cult behaviour.

But not all cults appear, at least initially, to be religious in nature, with high-profile US case NXIVM (the subject of HBO docuseries The Vow) disguising itself as a training provider aiding with self-help and professional development.

Although they can seem like a far-fetched or distant concept, cult experts have warned that it's easier than you might expect to be drawn into such an organisation – and, as starkly shown in the aforementioned statistic, there are plenty of them knocking about.

In a separate interview for another BBC Radio 4 investigation, A Very British Cult, Stein said: "There's such a strong stereotype that the only cults are in California where people wear long orange robes... There is a cult in your neighbourhood."

Unchosen is available to stream on Netflix.

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