Sick, cynical and irresistible: Netflix's Kaos reviewed

Kaos is a new Netflix gods-and-monsters black-comedy blockbuster that will scorch your screen and fry your brain like a thunderbolt from Zeus. It’s sick, cynical, brutal and very, very dark but it’s so well acted, ingeniously plotted, moving, inventive, funny and addictive that I fear resistance may be futile.

Playboy Poseidon hangs out on his superyacht servicing his mistress – and sister, and brother’s wife

Written by Charlie Covell, it’s like Succession relocated to a parallel modern world in which the ancient Greek gods still rule over us, ruthlessly pursuing their peculiar ends with a characteristically Olympian disregard for the pain and misery their shenanigans inflict on us worthless mortals.

These gods are excruciatingly spoilt, selfish and capricious. When Zeus (Jeff Goldblum) loses his favourite watch (a tacky, gold Casio-style number) he takes it out on the young staff at his palace, all of them dressed up like Wimbledon ball boys. Spoiler alert: he lines them up on his roof – perhaps inspired by the apocryphal story about Louis XIV treating peasants like pheasants – slips another cartridge into his shotgun and calls ‘Pull’.