Epic Or Failure? ‘The Spoils Of Babylon’ Reviewed

As I stood in line for Anchorman 2 — Peanut M&Ms stuffed into my pack pocket, jumbo Coke sweating in my hand — one phrase kept turning over and over in my head: “Please let this be good, please let this be good, please let this be good…”

I didn’t just want it to be good, I needed it to be good. Like a lot of people who spent so much time watching and quoting the first Anchorman with friends, I felt like I had a personal investment in the second. I needed something that would live up to that, something that would push the same buttons and deliver that same high.

If sheer willpower was enough to make something good, then Anchorman 2 would have been the greatest comedy ever to hit cinemas. As it stands, the movie was just okay, perhaps mildly disappointing. Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe it just sucked — but either way, it’s certainly not something I care to revisit any time soon.

The same is true of the much-anticipated The Spoils Of Babylon.

The six-part miniseries aired its first episode last night on Showcase, and by all rights, it should be hilarious. The cast is top-notch, including Kristen Wig, Will Ferrell and Tobey Maguire, and the premise — a send-up of ‘80s TV melodramas — is ripe for their particular brand of comic weirdness. It was written by Saturday Night Live alums Matt Piedmont and Andrew Steele.  It has all the stuff I love and, perhaps in spite of my better judgement, I was expecting big things. As the first episode faded in on Will Ferrell’s narrator, I crossed my fingers, and repeated that same phrase once again: “Please let this be good.”

But sadly, it wasn’t to be. The Spoils Of Babylon is a disappointment, albeit a fascinating one. All the parts are there, moving as they should, and yet something is not quite right. The first two episodes that I’ve now watched look and feel like a comedy should, but the script is strangely flat, setting up joke after joke before leaving them hanging, as you wait for punchlines that never really arrive.  It’s too earnest to be funny, but also too odd and quirky to be serious.

Ferrell stars as a depraved and debauched novelist named Eric Jonrosh. The conceit goes that Jonrosh’s epic, thousand-page potboiler, The Spoils Of Babylon, is the source material for the miniseries we’re watching. Originally conceived as a 22-hour TV event, the story has been severely cut down to six half-hour episodes.

Jonrosh himself is a hilarious character, double-fisting goblets of wine and telling dirty behind-the-scenes anecdotes about the show. He comes from the Ron Burgundy school of comic buffoonery, and his appearances, which bookend each episode, are the funniest parts. A whole show devoted to Eric Jonrosh would really have been great — but the show-within-a-show that comes sandwiched in between his bits just can’t compete. The Spoils Of Babylon is a riff on miniseries like The Thorn Birds, by way of Dallas and Dynasty. It tells the story of the Moorhouse family, a Texas oil dynasty, and the forbidden love between daughter Cynthia (Kristin Wiig) and her adopted brother Devon (Tobey Maguire), which spans decades and brings about endless drama and heartache, and ends, as the series begins, in gunfire.

As the Moorehouse family patriarch Jonas, Tim Robbins is agreeably silly. Wiig puts on a wide-eyed lunatic routine as Cynthia, while Maguire’s dashing, mid-20th century good looks give Devon a tragic, romantic quality. The problem lies with the script – all three are funny performers, but the dialogue plays it straight, never allowing them to really let loose.

When Spoils is funny, however, it is very funny. In episode two, Devon goes off to war to try and forget Cynthia, and returns home with his new bride Lady Anne, a prim and proper British mannequin voiced by Carey Mulligan. It’s a winningly bizarre touch, all the better because no context or explanation are provided. (It’s also worth noting that Wiig and the mannequin have better chemistry than almost anyone else in the show; a key scene with them together at the breakfast table had me doubled over with laughter.)

There’s another great moment in the first episode, in which Maguire’s character reads an inscription on the back of a gold pocket watch that goes on, and on, and on… It’s one of those jokes that start out mildly funny as you realise what’s going on, then elicit a few more chuckles, and then finally leave you in involuntary hysterics. A bit more of this off-the-wall stuff would have greatly improved the initial installments of the show.

That’s not to write Spoils off completely. There are still four episodes to go, and a number of key cast members have yet to appear. The first episode offers a brief glimpse of grown-up Haley Joel Osment, and I really can’t wait to see what he brings to the table as Cynthia’s ‘evil’ son Winston. Likewise, I’m looking forward to finding out who or what the hell Jessica Alba’s Dixie Mellonworth might be.

Maybe the series will get better and turn into the kind of thing my friends and I will be watching and quoting years from now. Maybe my expectations were way too high going in. Either way, based on initial impressions, The Spoils Of  Babylon feels like a waste of a lot of great potential.

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Alasdair Duncan is an author, freelance writer and video game-lover who has had work published in Crikey, The Drum, The Brag, Beat, Rip It Up, The Music Network, Rave Magazine, AXN Cult and Star Observer.