Netflix has decided not to return to Mount Olympus, canceling its series Kaos after a single season.
The decision comes about six weeks after the dark comedy, based on Greek and Roman mythology and created by Charlie Covell (The End of the F*ing World), made its debut on the streamer. Kaos appeared in Netflix’s top 10 charts for English-language series in each of its first four weeks, topping out at No. 3 for the week of Sept. 2-8. It earned 14.9 million views (measured by total viewing time divided by running time) over those weeks, a middling number by the streamer’s standards.
In the United States, the show had 3.34 million views as of Sept. 8, according to Nielsen’s streaming ratings (viewing totals for subsequent weeks aren’t yet available).
Kaos puts Greek and Roman mythology in a present-day setting. The series stars Jeff Goldblum as Zeus, who has chained fellow god Prometheus (Stephen Dillane) to a cliff as punishment for interfering with Zeus’ rule. Prometheus then seeks to overthrow Zeus with the help of three humans, Eurydice (Aurora Perrineau), Ariadne (Leila Farzad) and Caeneus (Misia Butler). The cast also includes Janet McTeer, Cliff Curtis, David Thewlis, Rakie Ayola, Killian Scott, Nabhaan Rizwan, Debi Mazar, Mat Fraser, Stanley Townsend, Billie Piper and Suzy Eddie Izzard.
In an Instagram post, Perrineau said of the cancellation that “this one hurts” but praised her castmates and the show’s creative team. “Everyone was brilliant and uniquely themselves. Every performance surprised and excited me,” she wrote. “I can’t believe I got to do this with all of you. We made something weird, dark, hilarious, deranged, and absolutely tragic — something entirely human.”
Glad I didn’t start it and waste my time. They really need to start picking shows up for a minimum 2 seasons. It’s becoming pretty normal for people to not start shows on the first season which skews the metrics and makes shows look worse than they are. Give a show a 2 season minimum and let them end the 2nd season on a ending that could also be a series finale.
They need to stop pretending a show needs to be a fucking blockbuster success to be worth producing.
The fact that they pull the plug so much on good shows that people watch because they don’t get every viewer on the service talking about them for months is why I don’t do Netflix anymore. (Well, that and the fact that the version that’s not artificially low quality is pretty much the same price as Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+. I don’t really care about the ESPN but both of Disney+ and Hulu individually blow them out of the water on content).
You can’t build a cult following without failing first, most of the time.
This is Netflix. Two seasons means you did good, and get dragged behind the woodshed.
The fact showrunners still pull cliffhanger shit, as if they’re totes mcgoats gonna get a third season if they tease hard enough, is 100% their fault. They know how Netflix works. Everyone knows how Netflix works. It’s been A Thing for over a decade.
Meanwhile: runaway successes with solid conclusions never seem to have trouble making a sequel anyway. Nothing needs to be left open, let alone… baited. Just tell your damn story!