If the Roy family in Succession seemed dysfunctional, just wait until you meet this lot. High on his throne on Mount Olympus, Zeus, king of the gods, glides around a vast palace interior-designed with what looks like acres of Versace Home fabrics and Florida pastels. Wearing a natty collection of velour leisure suits and gold jewellery, he sends thunderbolts and natural disasters down to the mortals. 

Jeff Goldblum is deliciously cast in the role, a stylish neurotic in tennis shorts, simmering with insecurity and murderous lust for power. Zeus’s wife (and sister) Hera is giving him cause for concern, his son Dionysus is a disappointment and now the poorly dressed humans are daring to blaspheme against him. Over eight episodes, Zeus’s unravelling becomes tangled up with the fate of three humans and the complexities of The Underworld. 

The mythology of the Ancient Greeks is a rich treasure trove that writer Charlie Covell delights in rifling through here, springboarding off original tales and modernising them with many trippy, grotesque twists. So Poseidon, god of the sea, is a pescatarian lothario on a superyacht, played by Cliff Curtis in one of many bits of impeccable international casting. Hades is reimagined as a Northern English bureaucrat (David Thewlis), Medusa becomes an acerbic New Yorker (Debi Mazar) and Lachesis (Suzy Eddie Izzard), is one of the three gender-nonconforming Fates, taking a nonchalant approach to the plight of anguished souls that they meet. 

Alongside the wonderfully absurd and comic tone, the plotlines manage to draw up those classic profundities from the original texts too; the purpose of life, the promise of an afterlife, the danger in organised religion. Love triangles appear, jealousies rage, families are ravaged; it’s an ambitious yet glossy gallop through all the age-old conflicts. It’s moving too; subplots about Caeneus, ostracised for being born a girl but identifying as a boy, or Eurydice, falling out of love with her besotted husband Orpheus, add gravity to the more preposterously fun segments. 

Trans-identity issues, polyamory, matriarchal societies, fear of ageing; there’s almost nothing we can’t learn from the Ancient Greek writers and Covell’s clever script functions on multiple levels. We can enjoy the Baz Luhrmann-style update on ancient sagas like an entertaining music video-meets-family soap opera, or deep dive into the endless Easter eggs left for Greek mythology fans (I enjoyed getting lost in many Google labyrinths along the way). 

These stories of three-headed dogs, six-headed sea monsters and man-exclusionary societies of woman-only warriors are absolute ambrosia for viewers. Soundtracked by Anohni, Elastica, Dire Straits and Everything But The Girl, this slick update is anything but chaotic, showing us how the ultra-privileged flex their power over the masses, often with brutal consequences. 

KAOS is available now on Netflix.