Kaos review – Jeff Goldblum’s furiously fun Greek gods drama is a masterpiece

I can give you no better – or certainly no shorter – indication of the overall tone of the thing than to say that Jeff Goldblum plays Zeus. White-suited and debonair, he swaggers happily round his sprawling palace and gardens on Mount Olympus until the day a new monument to him in Krete is publicly unveiled and found to have been desecrated by a gang of Trojans. Then he finds a new wrinkle on his forehead that he decides must the fulfilment of the first part of a prophecy that will see his reign end and chaos rule instead. All of his neuroses and insecurities begin to flare (to such a degree that within a few episodes it feels like quite a departure in its vulnerability for Goldblum, best known for roles based on impregnable cool) as he plots vengeance on humanity. His wife, Queen (and sister, as an asterisked onscreen caption notes) Hera – the suitably magisterial Janet McTeer – tries to encourage him to keep his dignity and the doling out of punishments and the investigation.