KAOS

Despite our reservations about KAOS, we are riveted by Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, and we hope his performance makes up for a series whose satisfaction over its own cleverness shows in almost every frame.

Kaos offers some fun flourishes of originality, drama and intrigue through admirable rewrites of ancient Greek myths and legends. And it’s all buttressed by skilled performances from the likes of Jeff Goldblum, Janet McTeer, and David Thewlis as dysfunctional, immortal rulers feuding over prophecies and power. But it's also a bloated series unable to adequately service its expansive cast of characters.

The gods are at their most watchable when behaving supernaturally, smiting humanity with locusts and molten ice caps. But whenever they act and sound and joke like us, the great risk – and the thing that just prevents this lively entertainment from clambering to an almighty climax – is bathos.

There’s no denying that parts of Kaos are compelling – stories don’t endure for millennia if they aren’t, fundamentally, a good old yarn. But the series strains at points under the weight of its arch, high-concept premise. It might not all be Greek to me – but some of it definitely was.

Though KAOS has significant flaws, there's a lot that works very well. Other than Goldblum, the cast is terrific.

You can still sense what I assume was an enticing outline that displayed Covell’s enthusiasm and made Netflix want to come on board. But you can also sense the places somebody hoped to come back and replace the generic gap-filling with high drama or comedy, and instead just left the filler.