Kaos, the new venture from Charlie Covell, the creator of Channel 4 drama series The End of the F**king World, is anything but chaotic. Multi-stranded, immaculately paced and plotted, it’s a reimagining of Greek mythology that is subtle and intricate, witty, rigorous, hugely intelligent, funny and brutal. It flies.
Covell’s script is a masterpiece – so confident, so apparently effortless, so light on its feet – as it builds an alternative modern world in which pantheism (and Zeus) still rules, and gods mix with mortals, rarely to good ends. The eight episodes are stuffed with action, jokes (however much events darken as we go on) and grace notes. A huge cast of characters is deployed without a single one feeling underdeveloped or unnecessary, with Covell using them to interrogate what it means to be human, to have power, to be desperate, to have free will or not. They are all folded seamlessly into its furiously fun embrace.
