The Spoils Before Dying

Our Review

Improbably, the sequel to IFC’s The Spoils of Babylon is better than the original: the same faux-literary miniseries format (Eric Jonrosh, the drunken auteur author, introduces each episode from a wine-drenched armchair) applied to a noir detective story. Matt Bomer is Rock Banyon, a jazz-pianist detective in 1962 Los Angeles framed for the murders of his ex-lover and a scientist; Maya Rudolph, Michael Sheen, and a glory-seeking Will Ferrell-as-Jonrosh populate the parody.

Where Babylon parodied TV miniseries, Dying parodies noir: the hard-boiled narration is deliberately overcooked, the jazz scenes are aggressively absurd, and the mystery resolves the only way a fake-serious noir can. Six half-hour episodes — the perfect dosage for a joke this concentrated. The cast’s commitment to playing it straight while the material goes sideways is the whole show.

Verdict: Watch it in one sitting. A beautiful, stupid crime poem.