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 via jam-packed cruise ships.
A frightening thought, and it gets worse. An underworld introduction video featuring David Thewlis’ Hades tells these visitors everything they need to know about the next step. If they were buried with a coin in their mouth, then they’ll be on their merry way to a new beginning.
If they weren’t, they’ll have to stay in the underworld, get a job and hang about for the next 200 years. These sequences are handled brilliantly, and Covell’s series is at its best whenever it comes back to poor Eurydice (Aurora Perrineau), whose widower husband, Orpheus, buried her without that all-important coin. Everything else is just filler, and the Zeus plot — the supposed driving force of this clunky, uncoordinated tale — requires significant levels of patience.
We begin in the present day. Welcome to a world where gods are real, where Zeus (Goldblum), master of the skies, rules all, and where annual human sacrifices are televised for entertainment purposes. Poor Zeus, faffing about in his palatial paradise atop Mount Olympus, has a problem — a new wrinkle has appeared on his forehead, which can only mean one thing: the end is nigh.
Killian Scott (Orpheus) and Nabhaan Rizwan (Dionysis) in the show. Photo: Netflix There is a prophecy, one that says that a line will appear, Zeus’s time will be up, and chaos will reign. The big guy is a sleazy megalomaniac: cruel, self-absorbed, with zero empathy and limited self-awareness, and this prophecy scares the bejaysus out of him.
He relies on his darling wife/sister Hera (McTeer), to tell him that everything is OK, that there are no “blips” in his magic water fountain (a symbol of his power), and that he’s still got it. Zeus’s old pal/prisoner, Prometheus (Stephen Dillane), hangs out on the side of Mount Olympus, having his liver pecked by crows. Prometheus narrates the series, and he is occasionally summoned to Zeus’s quarters for some prophecy chit-chat.
Unbeknown to the sociopathic king of the gods, however, Prometheus is secretly orchestrating a convoluted plan to remove Zeus from his throne. It involves three unconnected humans, and it might also involve Zeus’s son, Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan). Zeus’s kids rarely visit their old man, but Dionysus always shows up.
He also parties too much and has yet to find a purpose of his own. That all changes when Dionysus encounters Orpheus (Killian Scott), a drippy rock star whose wife — the aforementioned Eurydice — was run over by a truck. Dionysus will try to get Orpheus to the underworld so he can save Eurydice, who’s trapped in purgatory.
There is just one problem: Eurydice no longer loves Orpheus, and she was planning to leave him before she died. Give yourself a pat on the back if you’ve made it this far. You would do well to keep a Greek mythology guidebook nearby.
Indeed, Kaos has a lot of explaining to do. Perhaps it will settle — maybe it will find its groove. But the first couple of hours are exhausting.
Conflicting tones hardly help. There are two, sometimes three different shows competing for our attention here — one of them (the Eurydice tale) is off to an interesting start. The others need a lot of work.
Covell, the Bafta-winning writer of Channel 4’s The End of the F***ing World , takes some big swings with Kaos. You cannot fault its ambition, its ideas and its intentions. Suzy Eddie Izzard (centre) makes a cameo.
Photo: Netflix But it rarely comes together as well as you’d hope, and some of our performers are struggling. Goldblum — enjoying himself one minute, out of sorts the next — is only as good as the material allows him to be. It makes sense that Hugh Grant was initially employed for the Zeus role (scheduling conflicts scuppered that ingenious bit of casting).
Grant is a terrific comic actor, and a dab hand with chilly, cartoon villainy. He’d have triumphed here, but Goldblum — applying his trademark tics and idiosyncrasies throughout — is only ever believable as the neurotic, fusspot Zeus — less so as the wicked ruler with a thunderous temper. Likewise, our own Killian Scott — a terrific actor, and a capable leading man — is sorely miscast as a flashy musician with a guilty conscience.
Orpheus is underwritten and underdeveloped, and often difficult to root for, and Scott can’t quite get a handle on him. It’s a creaky, charmless turn in a series full of creaky, charmless turns. The jokes rarely land, the drama lacks conviction and is drenched in relentless exposition.
Surprise cameos (Billie Piper in one corner, Suzy Eddie Izzard in another) are poorly managed. There are no real stakes — how can there be when we’re dealing with a world where gods are real, heaven is easily accessible and people who get run over by trucks are saved in the next life? Chaotic stuff, indeed. Kaos is streaming on Netflix from August 29 Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news.
