Series: Series »Kaos«: Fuck the gods

When the successful pop musician Orpheus (Killian Scott) descends into the underworld to bring his lover Eurydice (Aurora Perrineau) back from the realm of the dead, she doesn’t want to come with him. On the one hand, she fell in love with Caineus (Misia Butler) in the underworld, often described by historians as the first trans heroic figure in ancient mythology. On the other hand, she wanted to leave her husband anyway, shortly before she died.

At least that’s how the Netflix series “Kaos” rewrites one of the most famous Greek myths. The lively eight-part series stages the ancient Greek world of gods as a contemporary, colorful pop spectacle with plenty of bright hits from David Bowie to Abba. At the same time, “Kaos” is a satirical allegory of the fight against domination and ideology, because the power of the immortals threatens to erode.

“Kaos” is a satirical allegory about the fight against rule and ideology, because the power of the immortals threatens to erode.

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Zeus in particular, played wonderfully by a blasé, sweatsuit-wearing Jeff Goldblum in the style of a Mafioso, suffers greatly from the fact that mortals no longer worship him. At the inauguration of a Zeus monument in Heraklion, Greece, where a large part of the action takes place alongside Mount Olympus and the underworld full of gray high-rise buildings and on the ostentatious yacht of the sea god Poseidon, a political splinter group is operating and pours a lot of excrement over his monument.

These Trojan Seven (based on the Chicago Seven, who were brought to justice after the anti-Vietnam War riots at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in the USA) are connected to a rebellious network that reaches into the world of the gods and to, among other things Prometheus (Stephen Dillane) and Medusa (Debi Mazar) belong.

Zeus in Olympus and his wife Hera (Janet McTeer) notice that their power is slowly slipping away. Their immortality is linked to the realm of the dead and the souls that arrive there, which are harvested like a resource. All of this is staged with a world-building that is as absurd as it is astonishingly precise, in which modern Crete is ruled by a military dictator alias King Minos (Stanley Townsend) as governor of the divine order.

His daughter Ariadne (Leila Farzad) soon opposes him and even joins forces with the insurgent rebels. Despite all the changes, the series remains relatively close to the mythological material. This mixture of musically accompanied pop spectacle, with which a well-known historical material is spiced up and told quickly, is somewhat reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann’s Shakespeare film adaptation “Romeo + Juliet” (1996) with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The realm of the dead, with its 1950s vintage aesthetic and old-fashioned bureaucracy, is kept in black and white. Eurydice and Caineus investigate there against the divine order, while in the human world God Dionysus helps Orpheus on his way to the realm of the dead. He has to get past the goddesses of fate, who run a music bar in a desert-like area. We then descend through garbage cans into the realm of the dead.

Meanwhile, Mino’s daughter Ariadne learns the truth about her brother, the Minotaur, and Zeus resorts to natural disasters that are very reminiscent of climate change in order to discipline rebellious humanity. Because more and more people are saying: “Screw the gods!” while the Cretan police are carrying out raids and beating up non-believers.

How this ends in the end and whether the arrogant and complacent gods finally lose their power or what is happening in Olympus and whether Hera ends her liaison with Poseidon should not be revealed here. As absurd and crazy as this series is, it turns the ancient potpourri material, which seems surprisingly timeless in this production, into a fast-paced, empowering epic that is simply fun.

Available on Netflix.