FX’s 2-Part Series Is the Perfect Modern Binge After Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’
Collider argues that FX’s two-part series The Old Man is a fitting modern companion to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, presenting both as stories about the troubled return home after war. The article says the drama exceeds its apparent action-thriller premise by focusing on loss, displacement and a universal desire for homecoming.
The series follows Dan Chase, played by Jeff Bridges, who lives in hiding in upstate New York after events connected to the Soviet–Afghan War. He has lost his wife to Huntington’s disease and is largely estranged from his daughter; the article compares his isolation to Odysseus being stranded on Calypso’s island, and notes influences from Homer’s epic and Apocalypse Now.
- The Old Man is presented as a modern homecoming epic.
- Dan Chase’s past prevents a normal return home.
- The article links the series to Homer and Apocalypse Now.
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The Old Man is an FX drama about Dan Chase, a former intelligence operative who has spent years living under a false identity in rural New York. When people from his past find him, he is forced to confront the consequences of his work during the Soviet–Afghan War, a conflict fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
Jeff Bridges plays Chase, whose private grief and separation from his daughter are central to the story alongside its espionage plot. The series also features John Lithgow as Harold Harper, an FBI official with a long history connected to Chase.
The story draws on the long-established idea of a survivor struggling to return to an ordinary life after conflict. That theme is also central to Homer’s ancient Greek poem The Odyssey, in which Odysseus faces a long and difficult journey home after the Trojan War.
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The case for
The Old Man can reasonably be seen as a strong modern companion to The Odyssey because both use the idea of a delayed, painful homecoming to explore identity, loss and the consequences of war. Its thriller framework may make those themes accessible to contemporary viewers, while Dan Chase’s isolation, grief and fractured family give the ancient concern with belonging an intimate human form. On this view, the comparison highlights meaningful shared emotional territory rather than requiring a direct adaptation.
The case against
The comparison may be too broad, since difficult returns from conflict are common dramatic material and do not by themselves make The Old Man a particularly close counterpart to Homer or Nolan. The series is principally a modern espionage thriller with its own political setting and genre conventions, whereas The Odyssey has a distinct mythic structure, cultural context and concern with divine intervention and kingship. A viewer could therefore find the suggested pairing interesting but overstated, especially if it raises expectations of deeper narrative parallels than the programme provides.