Rating: 2/5 Jeff Goldblum as Zeus in Kaos. Photo: Netflix. Killian Scott (Orpheus) and Nabhaan Rizwan (Dionysis) in the show.
Photo: Netflix Suzy Eddie Izzard (centre) makes a cameo. Photo: Netflix It all sounded so promising. Jeff Goldblum as Zeus in tennis shorts? We’ll take that.
Janet McTeer as the king of the gods’ all-powerful wife Hera? That should be a hoot. Our own Killian Scott as a sentimental rock star who travels to the underworld to rescue his wife from purgatory? Go on, then. These are tasty ingredients for a series that combines contemporary melodrama with classical mythology, and there are no logical reasons why Charlie Covell’s Kaos (Netflix, from August 29) shouldn’t work.
But it doesn’t. Some commentators have already likened Kaos to Succession . An obvious comparison, given the familial power battles at play.
But Goldblum’s Zeus is no Logan Roy, and Covell’s writing here isn’t nearly as sharp as that of Jesse Armstrong and the rest of the Succession team. Much like the Dionysus character who struggles to obtain his father’s approval, Kaos suffers from a major identity crisis. It is, I’m sorry to report, a show that trips and stumbles towards a vaguely coherent narrative.
It tries to be too many things at once: fantasy, black comedy, surreal thriller, yappy satire. Every now and then, it strikes gold. Take, for instance, Kaos’s eerie depiction of the afterlife: an icy, monochrome landscape where freshly departed ‘visitors’ arrive .