For those of you who love Prime Video’s The Boys, imagine if instead of self-obsessed antiheroes the show was built around gods and goddesses in human form — that is, the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology. We’re talking Zeus, Poseidon, and the like, all of whom dress like the super-rich, squabble like children, and live in jaw-dropping palatial luxury. The tone is sneering, while the violence is extremely bloody. That, in a nutshell, is Netflix’s new series Kaos, a black comedy starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus himself (“king of the godda*n gods”).
I draw a comparison to The Boys, by the way, only to contextualize the tone of Netflix’s new contemporary tale about the denizes of Olympus. Which is to say, if you’re a fan of the one, you should find plenty to like in the other once it arrives on Netflix later this month (on Aug. 29).
Right away, the title of this eight-episode drama also gives you a little hint of what it’s all about. One of the animating principles here is that the world was born from chaos — and while Kaos is set in the modern era, it’s a sort of off-kilter, slightly askew version of it (thus, the modified spelling). In other words, there are no old men in the sky here wearing togas and hurling lightning bolts at Earth. What we get, instead, is a creepy Goldblum-as-Zeus laughing deliriously at his TV while watching scenes of devastation and commenting about how much he loves fire.
“In the intriguing world of Kaos,” the streamer explains, “it’s the pantheon of gods versus humans with Zeus at the top of the mythological food chain as the cruel and stylish ruler of the gods, a position he has enjoyed for some time. Then one day he discovers the unthinkable: A wrinkle on his forehead.
“Paranoia builds, leading the supreme deity down a dangerous and unstable path. All-powerful Zeus is convinced his fall is nigh and sees omens of doom everywhere.”
And he’s actually right to be worried, because Zeus’ onetime friend and now prisoner Prometheus (played by Stephen Dillane) is hatching a plot to bring him down. And it involves three humans who, as it turns out, are completely unaware of their cosmic significance and likewise have no idea about the part they’ve been tapped to play in order to save the world.
This, more or less, is the kind of thing I want to see more of from Netflix. Basically, it’s bursting with originality, from the wacky and darkly comic storyline to the self-indulgent gods and goddesses who viewers will love to hate. Kaos, from The End of the F***ing World creator Charlie Covell, is basically about what the 1% would be like if they also had superpowers and the power to Thanos us all out of existence. Honestly, the mind boggles.
