Decline and Fall

Based on the 1928 satirical novel by Evelyn Waugh, this three-part 2017 British miniseries stars Jack Whitehall as Paul Pennyfeather, a naïve, well-meaning Oxford divinity student whose life is upended after a practical joke by upper-class toffs gets him expelled. Paul takes a job as a schoolmaster at a fourth-rate boy's school run by the incompetent Dr. Fagan (David Suchet), who doesn't care that Paul is terribly unqualified for his assigned subjects, and he meets miserable and equally unqualified colleagues who have survived through intimidation in the classroom (and alcohol the rest of the time). Eva Longoria costars as a seductive single mother from South America who hires Paul as a summer tutor for her son and keeps him on as a fiancé and fall guy for the family business. The wide-eyed Paul is too smitten to see that she's running an international prostitution ring and too innocent to grasp the corruption and mendacity surrounding him. Paul's wild ride takes him from high society to hard labor, where his former school colleagues pop up again: Stephen Graham as a porter with a shady past, Douglas Hodge as a gay teacher with a wooden leg and a history of bad behavior that lands him "in the soup," and Vincent Franklin as a teacher with an awful wig and a drinking problem. Largely faithful to Waugh's wicked social satire, it's a witty, snappy, inventive black comedy set in the class-based culture of 1920s Britain, where the rich live blithely and recklessly and everyone else hustles and lies in order to endure. Extras include behind-the-scenes featurettes and a photo gallery. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)