Chained to his rock, a gaping wound in his side, Prometheus, a pot-bellied fifty-something, is dressed only in orange football shorts. The Olympus from which Zeus arbitrarily exercises his infinite power looks like a villa bought from a drug trafficker in trouble. Eurydice considers leaving Orpheus and her stifling love.
At first glance, Kaos resembles the version of Greek myths that a khâgne class would give for an end-of-year party, made of winks to the initiated and schoolboy transgressions. If we hold on, it is less to measure the freedoms than the screenwriter of Kaos, Charlie Covell (which requires, in English, the use of the pronoun they to designate him/her; and which one is not surprised to learn that his studies were followed at Oxford), took with the ancient texts that to take advantage of the Olympian presence of Jeff Goldblum as master of the Pantheon.
In his color-changing tracksuits, behind his yellow-tinted glasses, the former Fly terrorizes the here below (which is summed up here as a Crete living under the rule of a Minos who is also tyrannical), multiplying petty vengeances against those humans who dare blasphemy. Goldblum makes him a former seducer prisoner of his addiction to power, who now prefers to terrorize and torment rather than charm or cajole. The American actor immediately imposes his sovereignty, surrounded by Janet McTeer (Hera, rational, insensitive), Nabhaan Rizwan (Dionysus, immature, touching) and Cliff Curtis (Poseidon, who looks more like a skipper of the yacht he lives on than a owner).
Unexpected parallel
The ensemble work of this divine cast holds the attention long enough for us to find ourselves, around the third episode, caught in a trap of stories made of very ancient motifs and very contemporary anxieties. Zeus is tormented by an ancient prophecy that announces the end of his family and the advent of chaos. All the myths summoned by Charlie Covell thus become the instruments of the process by which humans will recover their free will while losing the meaning that the inhabitants of Olympus gave to their existence.
It remained to stage this revolution: Kaos mobilizes both the means of cinema (the black and white used to represent the Underworld irresistibly evokes that of Eastern Europe) and those of theater. The operetta uniforms of the Minoan guard, the flashy splendor of the divine garden parties give the series the allure of certain opera productions.
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