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'The Spoils Before Dying' on IFC a sendup of classic film noir

Eric JonRosh, the creative genius behind TV's most beloved miniseries of all time, The Spoils of Babylon, graces our screens a year later with the earth-shattering follow-up, The Spoils Before Dying, a three-hour miniseries of world historical significance offered by IFC across three consecutive nights.

Will Ferrell in "The Spoils Before Dying." (Photo Credit: Katrina Marcinowski / IFC)
Will Ferrell in "The Spoils Before Dying." (Photo Credit: Katrina Marcinowski / IFC)Read more

Eric JonRosh, the creative genius behind TV's most beloved miniseries of all time, The Spoils of Babylon, graces our screens a year later with the earth-shattering follow-up, The Spoils Before Dying, a three-hour miniseries of world historical significance offered by IFC across three consecutive nights.

This world-changing event starts Wednesday.

A self-proclaimed "auteur-storyteller-novelist-birdwatcher-yachtsman-journalist-short-story-ist-journeyman," JonRosh is the ultra-ridiculous, hyperbolic, rotund Orson Welles-ian character played with delicious irony by Will Ferrell. The Spoils Before Dying is IFC's latest miniseries produced by Ferrell and his Funny or Die collaborators.

Babylon, a send-up of 1980s nighttime soaps and miniseries about corporate empire-building, marked Funny or Die's attempt to jump from its stock in trade, the short-form web sketch, to a full TV production.

It wasn't the smoothest transition, despite flashes of true inspired craziness - including the scale-model buildings and toy cars used for exterior shots - and a first-rate cast that included Tobey Maguire, Kristen Wiig, Tim Robbins, Jessica Alba, and Michael Sheen.

The Spoils Before Dying, which lampoons Hollywood's classic films noirs of the 1940s and 1950s, is a much more assured and accomplished piece of filmmaking. But it's not nearly as wonderfully original or manic as its predecessor.

The best thing about the new series is the casting of Michael Kenneth Williams in the lead role as the passionate jazz musician Rock Banyon. He finds himself wrongly accused of murdering his former paramour, Fresno Foxglove (Maya Rudolph). Best known for his intense turn as hard-core gangsters in The Wire and Boardwalk Empire, Williams plays the straight man here, delivering the kind of searing, earnest turn we expect from hard-boiled noir numbers.

His performance makes for a wonderful counterpoint to the nutsoid hilarity delivered by the rest of the cast, including Babylon alumni Wiig, Sheen, Haley Joel Osment, and Val Kilmer.

Rock is arrested by cops who give him the third degree, but who agree to give him three days to clear his name. This launches the hero into an investigation as outsized, meandering, and confusing as Humphrey Bogart's noodle-bending Raymond Chandler piece, The Big Sleep.

The story leads Rock into a dark, deadly world populated by sexual predators, weirdos, and killers. And it's all enlivened by a few nicely placed musical numbers. (Who knew Wiig and Rudolph could sing the blues so well?)

The Spoils Before Dying won't tickle everyone's fancy, but it shows IFC at its creative best.

TV REVIEW

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The Spoils Before Dying

Three-hour miniseries at 9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday on IFC.

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