Netflix has a pretty long history of giving ambitious shows a chance, only to scrap them early on in their runs. “Kaos,” a Greek mythology comedy starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, joined that list of shows earlier this year. Created by Charlie Covell (“The End of the F***ing World”), the show was canceled by Netflix In early October roughly five weeks after it premiered. In short, the streamer didn’t take long to make a decision on this one.
The show centers on Zeus (Goldblum), who has long enjoyed his status as King of The Gods. He wakes up one morning and discovers a wrinkle on his forehead, convincing him his fall is coming. At the same time, his brother Hades (David Thewlis), God of the Underworld, is losing his grip, with a backlog of dead waiting to be processed. Hera (Janet McTeer), Queen of the Gods, rules over Earth but her power and freedom are threatened by Zeus’ increasing paranoia, forcing her to act. Meanwhile, Zeus’ son Dionysus (Nabhaan Rizwan) is out of control, creating more problems.
So, why did a show centered on Goldblum, a big star who literally had a statue of his “Jurassic Park” character erected in London, canceled so quickly? What went wrong? What could have been better? Is there any chance of a second season? To squash those hopes quickly, it unfortunately looks like this one is dead in the water. It comes down to what these things almost always come down to, which is investment versus the return on that investment.
Kaos had an audience, it just wasn’t big enough
When “Kaos” premiered in August, it quickly climbed Netflix’s top ten weekly charts. So, at least in the early going, the show generated a fair amount of interest amongst subscribers. Unfortunately, that viewership wasn’t significant enough for the brass at the company to risk putting another season into production.
The show spent a total of four weeks in the Netflix top 10 charts upon its release, peaking at number three on the English language TV chart. According to Forbes, the show accrued 22.8 million hours of total viewing. Based on Netflix’s way of calculating ratings, that translated to about 3.4 million views. Netflix divides the total hours viewed by a show’s runtime to determine a view, but every streamer handles this a little differently. It’s not as simple as determining a movie’s box office, for example, where x number of tickets sold equals x number of dollars brought in.
In its second week, the show pulled in 39.2 million hours viewed, which translated to 5.9 million views. That was the best week it had and it went down from there. That may sound like a lot, but when we consider that Netflix had more than 238 million paid subscribers worldwide as of last summer, the expectation for a big, star-studded show like this is very high.
The critical reception wasn’t good enough to save Kaos either
The budget for “Kaos” wasn’t revealed but given its large ensemble and its impressive sets, those eight episodes surely didn’t come cheap. It surely wasn’t as expensive as “Arcane,” which is literally the most expensive animated show ever produced, but most things don’t exist on the extreme end of the spectrum. The viewers the show pulled in clearly didn’t indicate to Netflix that a continued investment was worthwhile. Granted, shows generally need a chance to grow and find an audience, as plenty of shows don’t hit their stride until their second or third season.
One thing that can save a show early on is critical reception. Unfortunately for this show, it just wasn’t good enough. “Kaos” currently holds a decent 76% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes to go with a slightly better 83% audience rating. It’s pretty firmly considered to be good, if not great. Therein lies the problem.
In the era of streaming where audiences have too many services to choose from, with new shows dropping all of the time, something merely being good probably doesn’t generate all that much positive word of mouth. Would that word of mouth be good enough to increase the audience size in a second season? Probably not. Especially if it took two years to get a second season made, which is becoming increasingly common these days.
Much like the sci-fi series “Away” which was axed after one season, or any number of other Netflix shows over the years, good isn’t good enough. The viewership was good, and the reviews were good, but the needs of the company dictate that these big shows need to be closer to great. That’s just the nature of the beast as it exists.
“Kaos” is streaming now on Netflix.