The Spoils of Babylon (Season 1)

The Spoils of Babylon (2014) is a six-episode IFC comedy miniseries — watch online on iFILM. The premise: pompous fictional author Eric Jonrosh (Will Ferrell) presents his long-lost epic television adaptation, a sweeping multi-decade saga of oil, war, and forbidden desire.

Tobey Maguire plays Devon, an adopted son raised by oil baron Jonas Morehouse (Tim Robbins), alongside Cynthia (Kristen Wiig) — the daughter he loves in ways that complicate everything. The plot moves from Texas oil fields through World War II and into the boardrooms of New York, accumulating every trope of the American dynasty genre along the way. Jessica Alba, Val Kilmer, Haley Joel Osment, Michael Sheen and Carey Mulligan all appear.

Director Matt Piedmont and co-creator Andrew Steele built the comedy on a precise rule: no one in the show knows it's funny. Maguire and Wiig commit fully to the material, which is exactly what the great bad soap operas demanded of their casts — and that straight-faced commitment is what makes this one work. Stream all episodes of The Spoils of Babylon online on iFILM.