IFC is already home to comedies like Portlandia, Comedy Bang Bang, and Marc Maron’s new show (as well as R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet, which might be funnier than all of them), and today they announced two new shows that I am already very excited about despite just reading the descriptions a few minutes ago.
The first is a totally bonkers sounding comedy produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, featuring Ferrell as the fictional author of an epic, century-spanning novel about a family that made a fortune in the oil business. I don’t usually like to straight-up blockquote press releases, but I am going to make an exception here because I don’t know if I can fully do it justice otherwise.
In the vein of The Thorn Birds and Winds of War, the epic story of The Spoils of Babylon spans three generations, taking viewers from the oil fields of Texas to boardrooms in New York City, through world war battlefields and velvet sheeted bedrooms. As the story unfolds, the booze, the passion and the heartache lead to illegal arms deals and international espionage with the Shah of Iran, not to mention the creation of the doomed sub-prime market
Holy Hell. This is either going to be amazing or a SPECTACULAR disaster. Ferrell himself has described the whole thing as “a crazy and maybe even a stupid idea,” which (a) sounds about right and (b) only makes me love it more. Even if it crashes and burns, I’m just glad someone somewhere is signing off on kooky, high degree of difficulty concepts like this. It provides an important counterbalance to CBS’s plain white toast approach to comedy, and keeps the world from spinning off its axis.
And in addition to that potential glorious mess, IFC has also greenlit a sketch show featuring The Birthday Boys, which will be produced by Ben Stiller and Bob Odenkirk, who previously worked together on The Ben Stiller Show. I am openly in the tank for anything involving Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show, Breaking Bad, etc.), and The Birthday Boys won my heart forever with the video I’ve posted below, so this is also something I would categorize as “a pretty good thing.”
(H/T THR)
