Studying Greek Mythology has always seemed like an insane challenge to me: so much drama, so many names, and so many twists. A soap opera that mixes betrayal, incest, passion, revenge, and so on. And if there is one thing that the most recent generations seem to have as a characteristic, it is a certain laziness to decipher old and complex themes, so the Netflix series Kaos was born bold and leaves us asking: what now?

A project that was commissioned in 2018, the series that only arrived on the platform in 2024 is very much in tune with the trend of recent years: to modernize and rethink classic content. And nothing more Classic than Greek Mythology!

Created by Charlie Covell, Kaos is brilliant at many moments, features a sharp cast, and weaves together parallel plots well, leaving only cultural ignorance to miss most of the jokes or anticipate what is to come. Because some names may clearly be “common”, but I bet you don’t remember all the details so you can’t exactly complain about the artistic liberties. If you want, of course. The idea behind “updating” the story is to emphasize that nothing has really changed: Power, Religion, Love, Hate, and Sex can change the destinies of nations as well as inspire the best and worst in everyone (humans or Gods).

Although the story takes place in modern Crete, it was filmed entirely in Seville, Spain, bringing color and an interesting aspect to the series by avoiding being in the studio. In this setting, the vain, vengeful, and insecure Zeus (Jeff Goldblum), king of the gods, lives on Mount Olympus with Hera (Janet McTeer), his queen, wife, and sister. He is concerned with maintaining the order of things under Faith by instilling Fear in Humans and, when this is questioned, he becomes paranoid about a prophecy that warns of the chaos that will ravage the Earth when the Gods fall.

This is the reason for the mythological parade to begin: Poseidon (Cliff Curtis), King of the Seas, always in swimming trunks and on a luxury super yacht; Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan), the young God who fears Hera and wants to please his father, Zeus, but deep down is a rich and bored boy; Hades (David Thewlis), the depressed brother who reigns in the underworld, and so on.

The narrator – and the plotter – is Prometheus (Stephen Dillane), the friend that Zeus left chained to the cliff for daring to question him. He distracts Zeus and runs the show, which, on Earth, features superpop star Orpheus (Killian Scott), obsessed with his muse and wife, Eurydice (Aurora Perrineau). The two remain the same: she dies and he goes looking for her in the underworld, with the help of Dionysus. There are many more names that you will remember and recognize, but the key to Covell’s excellence is transforming the story of a dysfunctional family into a dramatic comedy that makes us laugh, moves us, and think in a perfectly organized way, alerts us to the Chaos that makes us feel and that is, in fact, Freedom.

As a curiosity, although Jeff Goldblum is fascinating as Zeus, the original would have been Hugh Grant and I bet he would have been even more scathing in the role. I wish I had seen it. And yes, the soundtrack that brings together David Bowie, ABBA, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and so many others is a special highlight.

Eight episodes with a lot of stories are dense enough that it is not possible to embark on all at once. The network of characters is complex and in this ‘prologue’ some mythologies are significantly altered, but, most worryingly, the story has barely begun and we are left without knowing how the much-feared chaos will occur. Will Zeus have a chance?

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