IFC
You know that itching tension you feel when you get lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood, or get on the wrong bus and end up somewhere you don’t recognize? That feeling of being completely lost? Get ready to revisit that sensation in video form because the first trailer for IFC’s The Spoils of Babylon is probably the most bizarre clip to pop up on the Internet in some time. Tobey Maguire and an odd mix of actors including the likes of Kristen Wiig, Tim Robbins, Val Kilmer, Jessica Alba, and oddest of all, Haley Joel Osment (who I don’t think anyone has actually laid eyes on since the end of The Sixth Sense) star in a captivating two-minute glimpse of what can only be described as a kooky, dramatic nonsensical comedy.
We’d give you a detailed plot summary of what the new show was about if we were at all sure ourselves, given the trailer’s weirdness, but the show seems to focus on the trials of the Morehouse Family in a spoof of epic period dramas. Maguire plays Jonas Morehouse in a trailer that takes him from childhood, to the damp jungles of “Okajaba,” to shooting up heroin and making love to his adopted sister played by Wiig.
The Spoils of Babylon will be airing in January as a six-part miniseries. The series will be produced by Will Ferrell, who will also star in the show as the author of the series of books that the show’s fictional world is based on. IFC is known as the destination for television’s most bizarre and ambitious comedies, including the lovably weird Portlandia, and The Spoils of Babylon looks to increase that weird factor by a scale of about 30.
