(Credits: Netflix)

As Netflix series go, they don’t come more ambitious than Kaos, at least in narrative terms. The show attempts to recast the ancient Greek Myths in modern terms, with none other than Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, king of the gods. It swings in the right direction and very often hits the mark, underscoring the dizzying array of divinities and mythical humans with the deadpan humour of its narrator Prometheus, played by Stephen Dillane.

“Power can give a man many things,” he tells us in the opening moments of the first episode. “Taste is rarely one of them.” He points us towards Zeus striding around a mansion bedecked by inflatable pink flamingos in his dressing gown. Before adding, “There’s a plan to bring him down.” A plan that involves “three humans and a prophecy.”

The prophecy in question is revealed to us early on: “A line appears, the order wanes, the family falls, and Kaos reigns.” But its precise meaning, particularly in relation to the final phrase, which references the title of the series, only becomes clear in later episodes.

Zeus cottons on pretty quickly that the prophecy probably doesn’t have his best interests at heart, especially when he notices a wrinkle on his forehead. “That’s the line,” he tells Prometheus in panic. And the desecration of a monument to the gods in the Cretan city of Heraklion also suggests it’s his “order” that “wanes”.

And who are the “three humans”?

Meanwhile, down in Crete a human called Orpheus tries to gain access to the Underworld to bring his deceased wife Eurydice, who calls herself “Riddy”, back from the dead. He enlists the help of Zeus’ son Dionysus, who trades in his father’s gold watch – which symbolises time – to get Orpheus access to the afterlife.

Eurydice, on the other hand, strikes up a romance with Underworld diver Caeneus. These two, Prometheus tells us, are among the three humans connected to the prophecy which will spell the end of Zeus’ reign. The third, it’s revealed in Episode 4, is Ariadne, the daughter of President Minos of Crete, who confesses that she’s aware of the prophecy to her friend Theseus. She believes it relates to an incident in which she killed her brother Glaucus when she was two years old.

In fact, Glaucus is alive until he’s slain by their father, who fears another prophecy about his first-born usurping his presidency. Ariadne then fulfils her part in both prophecies by killing Minos, as she reveals she was the “first to draw breath” among Minos’ children.

Eurydice takes on her role when Orpheus brings her back to the realm of the living, at which point she’s visited by a prophet called Cassandra, who tells her that she and Ariadne must “set the living free.” Caeneus, who’s crossed through a frame into the realm of Nothing, “will do the same with the dead,” she adds. Then we see Caeneus rechristened under a new name, “Kaos”. He’s the titular character of the story.

The season ends with Prometheus sitting in Zeus’ through, and a line opening up a wound in the skin of the god’s hand. The line of the prophecy. “Kaos is coming,” Prometheus tells his former master, as Zeus’ wife Hera makes a deal with Ariadne to “destroy Olympus”, the home of the gods. And on that bombshell, we’re left waiting for Season 2.