In Netflix’s ‘KAOS’, Jeff Goldblum plays a petulant Zeus in a modern-day Ancient Greece with aplomb. But does the show have wings?
Ancient Greek mythology isn’t ancient to this world. Despite the English-language setting and its chintzy Hollywood aesthetic, this is a version of reality where the Greek Empire lasted another 2,000 years.
Petulance, vanity, and sarcasm are de rigueur for this reimagined pantheon. Who else could embody those virtues greater than Goldblum, who appropriates his trademark performance style to the suave debonair stylings of LA-Zeus.
But Zeus’ fortunes are turning. Zeus keeps noticing portents of trouble and the cracks are showing in the devotion of the people of Crete when the Trojans desecrate an Olympia Day monument in his name. Only his wife (and sister) Hera (an icy cool Janet McTeer) can calm Zeus down from retaliating to the blasphemy: “you’re king of the gods, humans are not a threat to you”.
Hera’s words might not be the full truth though. As Prometheus prophecies, maybe after thousands of years, the right humans will be able to destroy Zeus.
All the while, the first episode also brings us a side plot based around Eurydice, the lover of a rock-star version of Orpheus. She bumps into Cassandra, the overlooked prophetic Trojan queen, in the cereal aisle of a supermarket. There, Cassandra (played by a scenery-chewing Billie Piper) tells Eurydice that she will leave her partner today.
It’s in this plot during the first episode of ‘KAOS’ that it becomes unclear who the show is targeted at. For anyone familiar with Greek myths, there’s only one way the plot of characters like Orpheus and Eurydice will go.
On the flipside, for those who aren’t familiar with these myths. I’m not sure exactly how much there is to actually grab onto here. If ‘KAOS’ makes a key mistake, it’s that it assumes the viewer finds all this very grabbing. Without a vague interest in how the show is going to reframe these popular myths, the characters themselves don’t grab you. In particular, Eurydice and Orpheus are a bit too po-faced and everything is either suffused with too much gravitas or too modernised and down-to-earth for you to particularly care.
If you are intrigued by Greek mythology though, the semi-imaginative ways in which this show reimagines these stories does make a reliably interesting watch. Episode one’s other major player is Dionysus (played charmingly by Nabhaan Rizwan) who breaks with his own mythology by offering to help Orpheus get his wife back when the inevitable occurs.
After Dionysus, Hera and Zeus, episode two introduces Hades (ever glorious David Thewlis) and Persephone to prove that it’s the gods that will ultimately keep people’s interest in the show. While all the humans remain unbearably dour, all the actors behind the Gods have duly taken the note to play their parts larger than life.
From the first few episodes, the major issue is that whenever the gods are interacting with humans, the mismatch between these two vibes means the dialogue never zings. The gods are jumping through their lines like it’s a Joss Whedon script, while the humans pause with the portents of a Harold Pinter drama.
How ‘KAOS’ is ultimately received will be dependent on how fast and loose creator Charlie Covell is willing to play with myth. Play it too close to the established stories and this is just a surface-level adaptation that isn’t half as imaginative as the source material. Not close enough, and mythos fans will question why it bothered with the original in the first place.
There’s a middle option that straddles the tightrope of these two situations. Whether ‘KAOS’ can manage that remains to be seen…
