THE SPOILS OF BABYLON (2014): The greatest work of fiction ever written is perfectly and intricately translated into a beautiful TV miniseries by its very author, literary giant and wealthy philanthropist Eric Jonrosh

The business of writing bestselling novels is a cruel one.  Simply witness the travails of Eric Jonrosh, author of many successful epic novels, including The Spoils of Alabama.  His attempt to create a TV miniseries from his greatest work, The Spoils of Babylon, was constantly in danger of being thwarted, whether by studio interference or actor disobedience.  Even though filming was completed in the 1970s, the miniseries has only become releasable this year.  Jonrosh wrote, adapted, directed, and edited his original 22-hour cut carefully into three hours, and claims it is a masterpiece.

He is correct.  The legendary tale of the Morehouse family's rise to and fall from grace, captivatingly depicted on the page, has now been breathtakingly beamed to the TV set.  With this work, Jonrosh finally establishes himself as the king of both the printed word and the television screen.

Of course, it's all bogus.  IFC's The Spoils of Babylon is an uproarious deadpan parody of "epic miniseries," like The Thorn Birds and Rich Man, Poor Man, common in the '70s and '80s.  Each episode is introduced by Jonrosh (a heavily made-up Will Ferrell), in sequences not-so-subtly inspired by the infamous Orson Welles wine commercials of 1979 (as well as the notorious outtakes).  What follows is a straight-faced work of such deliberate and unbelievable smugness and self-importance that it's amazing that director Matt Piedmont and his co-writer Andrew Steele can sustain the deadpan atmosphere.  They can, and do.

Jonrosh's tome chronicles the story of the Morehouse family, narrated in the last moments of his life by Devon Morehouse (Tobey Maguire).  An orphan, Devon was adopted by oil prospector Jonas Morehouse (Tim Robbins).  When Jonas strikes it big, the family is thrown into disarray, especially when Devon develops feelings for his adoptive sister Cynthia (Kristen Wiig).

Babylon's only sin is that the entire premise is borrowed without credit from a British series, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, which hasn't largely caught on in America yet, save for a brief run on Adult Swim.  That, too, was a deadpan sendup of a TV trope (Twilight Zone-type sci-fi mixed with General Hospital-style soap) headed by an egocentric auteur who vastly overestimates his talent.  Babylon would be impeachable for this almost-plagiarism if it didn't do well by that premise, but it does, to the point that it should attract new fans to Darkplace, and vice versa.

The series-within-the-series is brilliantly conceived, and the performances from the exceptional cast are carefully realized.  The actors (all in character as phony actors from the '70s) do not merely give purposely bad performances, but craft believable characters who give bad performances.  Piedmont allows his actors to be serious rather than clownish, and they avoid the "so-bad-it's-funny" distinction by giving intensely committed performances of bad material.

Maguire's performance in particular is among the actor's best.  He finds what a hammy actor might seize upon in the character of Devon and plays it, and holds his seriousness as the series hurls him through several genres.  Robbins is also exceptionally good, playing the part of an acclaimed British actor taking on a southern accent to play the Morehouse patriarch.  The closest the series comes to going off the rails is Wiig's purposely histrionic performance, which threatens to break the series's deadpan tone several times, but Piedmont reins her in, and much of her heavyhanded acting is meant to be in character (the actress she plays is meant to be Jonrosh's ex-wife, who divorced him during production).

Rounding out the cast are Haley Joel Osment as Cynthia's loose-cannon son, Michael Sheen as her fey, Rhett Butler-like husband, Val Kilmer as a corrupt Army general, and Jessica Alba as a rival for Devon's love.

Keeping this sort of thing from becoming tired for three hours couldn't have been an easy task, but Piedmont and Steele manage it.  Jonrosh is set up as the kind of egomaniac who would attempt to master every genre, so each episode tackles a different one, from western to political intrigue to corporate melodrama to sci-fi, to a monumentally awful emulation of William Burroughs.  It's to the credit of Piedmont and Steele, who also collaborated with Ferrell on the underrated Spanish-language melodrama sendup Casa de mi Padre, that the series's tone is maintained for as long as it is.

If you've got cable, the entire series is viewable at IFC.com.  The entire series of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is available on YouTube.