‘Stiff Upper Lips’ Sends Up British Costume Drama

Even the heartiest satire is difficult to sustain. So “Stiff Upper Lips” begins quivering tediously two-thirds into its 90 minutes.

Until then, however, this “Masterpiece Theatre” farce is rip-roaringly ribald while wittily ridiculing Merchant Ivory epics and other movies and TV shows with costumed Brits, offering a room with a view of sight gags and other sendups galore.

Rarely has nonsense been as artistic. Targets here range from Masterpiece Theatuh itself to production-rich “Orlando” and “Howards End,” and once past its “Chariots of Fire” launch, the plot, such as it is, begins in earnest in a gothic country house near a railway stop known as Ivory’s End.

It’s here where Agnes Ivory (Prunella Scales) lives with her unmarried young niece, Emily (Georgina Cates), and boob of a nephew, Edward (Scales’ son, Samuel West). And where luscious Emily--whose high standards include a distaste for male facial hair, including eyebrows--is courted by Edward’s Cambridge chum, prime, sniffy Cedric Trilling (Robert Portal), an impeccably mannered gentleman who flaunts his snobbery like a lordship.

The characters eventually travel to Florence, Paris and India, where Cedric somehow takes on a striking resemblance to Gandhi and reunites with his great-uncle Horace (Peter Ustinov), a dissolute tea plantation owner and colonial magistrate with a liking for kangaroo courts. Meanwhile, Cedric and Edward display a curious liking for each other.

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Also here are a quintessential British servant named Hudson (Frank Findlay), as in “Upstairs, Downstairs,” and George (Sean Pertwee), a handsome young peasant along the lines of Mellors in “Lady Chatterly’s Lover.” His old dad reminds him, sternly: “People like us are the scum of the Earth, and don’t you never forget it!”

Credit here goes to writer Paul Simkin, writer-director Gary Sinyor and an excellent troupe of stony farceurs--two of whom, Scales and West, were in “Howards End,” the latter as pivotal working-class character Leonard Bast.

Taking a page from Jim Abraham and the Zucker brothers, “Stiff Upper Lips” and its broadside of barbs eventually become as labored and exhausting as they are earlier funny. Until then, hurrah!

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* “Stiff Upper Lips” airs Sunday night at 9 on KCET and KVCR. The network has rated it TV-PG-L (may be unsuitable for young children, with an advisory for language).