Kaos needed to make one big change to the Greek myths in Netflix retelling

Jeff Goldblum stars as Zeus in the irreverent retelling of the Greek myths, with acting legends like Janet McTeer, David Thewlis and Billie Piper joining him.

As you would expect, there are plenty of differences from the original Greek myths in Charlie Covell's adaptation for modern audiences, but the most prominent of all comes in much of the power being handed back to women in these tales. It might be a simple change, but in Kaos it works brilliantly, giving actresses including McTeer, Piper, Aurora Perrineau, Rakie Ayola and Leila Farzad their time to shine.

Kaos asks: What if Eurydice didn't really need saving from the Underworld? What if Persephone wasn't abducted by Hades but actually fell in love with him? What if Hera played Zeus as calculatingly as he played her?

Let's take a look at some of these changes in action. In the original Greek myth, Eurydice dies after being bitten by a viper, with the lyre-playing Orpheus heroically venturing to the Underworld to fetch her back. Kaos opens with Riddy (Perrineau) grappling with the decision of whether to leave her husband Orpheus (Killian Scott) - before she's brutally hit by a truck and dies.

As in the myth, Orpheus ventures to the Underworld to "rescue" her, only to discover that she's fallen in love with someone else while she's there (namely, Misia Butler's Caeneus) and this whole rescue is actually a bit of an inconvenience, really.

Of course, our Riddy is far from perfect and probably should have told Orpheus a long time ago that she wanted to leave him - but handing this agency back to her was absolutely crucial for a modern retelling of the myth, especially in a story that's been told so many times.

Elsewhere, we see Ayola's Persephone explicitly take control of her narrative - rejecting the long-told story that Hades (Thewlis) abducted and raped her, and stating clearly that she loves him and that they work together as a team.

Even actress Ayola admitted to RadioTimes.com that Persephone's story took a different path to what she was expecting, revealing she thought the role would be limited to "crying in the corner". What a terrible waste of her talents that would have been.

Instead, Ayola was able to shine in an understated love story, and even bring moments of comedy to what could have been a clumsily re-hashed, or even clichéd re-telling of the story of Hades and Persephone.

Then we have Hera. Played by McTeer, the Greek god often reduced to Zeus's wife is brought to life as a cold, calculating and yet fiercely protective figure. In myth, she's vengeful and jealous of Zeus's many affairs. In Kaos, she outdoes him, starting up an affair with his brother Poseidon (Cliff Curtis). Hera outsmarts Zeus at every turn and, with the season 1 finale hinting that she'll turn against him in a potential future season of the show, I know who I'm betting on to win.

That's without even mentioning the original characters created just for the show, like Piper's Cassandra. Her story's only strengthened by her relationship with Riddy - after everyone's dismissal of Cassandra, who turns out to be an actual prophet, Riddy is the only person to take her seriously. Then there's Ari, Farzad's character who makes a brutal decision for the good of her family and her city.

There's a lot to praise about Kaos - not least its no-nonsense inclusion of LGBTQ+ storylines and its refusal to bow to tropes. But in making the simplest of changes to stories we've heard time and time again, Covell has managed to bring us a genuinely fresh story from Mount Olympus.

In doing so, they've made these stories timely, intriguing and dramatic - something that was their aim from the very off. They recently told RadioTimes.com: "In updating [the Greek myths], I wanted to kind of make them accessible for everybody... I think there should be something for everybody, and you can not know anything about them or even hate them, and you could be a lover of them, and hopefully there's something for you in it."

They added: "The joy about the myths is that they are eternally relevant. I think you can press pause at any point in human history, and they will be relevant because they're timeless themes about love, death, power, abuse of power, dysfunctional families."

In flipping the stories on their heads, Covell has proven that sometimes the simplest changes are the most effective.

Kaos is available to stream on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £4.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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