While this mini-series wasn't as funny as some of the best SCTV spoofs, it still had enough laughs in it to make it more watchable than most of what passes for comedy these days. To fully appreciate it, you should be somewhat knowledgeable about film-noir and jazz from the 1950s. There are references to 1950s jazz musicians like Wardell Gray, a tenor sax player who was mysteriously murdered in the desert outside of Las Vegas. They never found Gray's killer, so the writers borrowed that case for the plot of this TV show. There are a lot of other jazz in-jokes in the dialogue, so I can see where many people would find this mini-series baffling or boring. All of the performances in the show are fine, though some of the writing leaves the actors with some pretty lame lines in regard to humor. There are a few things that didn't make sense, such as showing the two detectives knock on Rock's door twice, J. Edgar Hoover's arms flailing around towards the end, and Will Ferrell's character just staring into the camera at the end, but they didn't have much of a negative effect on the show.
Review of The Spoils Before Dying
