TV Reviews : Return Engagement for Bretts on ‘Masterpiece Theatre’

“Masterpiece Theatre” is bringing back that boisterous and glamorous British theatrical clan, the Bretts, in a six-part miniseries that kicks off Sunday night (8 p.m. on Channels 50 and 24, 9 p.m. on Channel 15, with Channel 28 launching the show a week from Sunday, June 18).

When “The Bretts” first surfaced two years ago, the family’s madcap stage royalty were the Jazz Age darlings of London’s West End. “Bretts II” moves events to 1931, with the family’s theatrical heyday on the wane as live theaters are gobbled up by talking picture palaces.

The hourlong episodes are artistically and structurally uneven, reflecting several credited British writers and directors. For instance, Art Deco-period charm and snippets of theater lore bitterly clash with melodramatic ingredients that veer from the Bretts’ lecherous actor-son to an unrelated action story concerning the family’s chauffeur and his troubled Irish nephew.

All this melodrama, in choppily edited segments, continually slices into the central narrative, like swirling subplots from “Upstairs, Downstairs.”

But “Bretts II” is also fun and revealing. The production is richest when depicting the dreaded impact of film on traditional theater people. The sixth and last episode (written by Richard LeParmentier and Paddy Fletcher and directed by John Woods) is the strongest of the bunch and worth the wait.

In a technically rousing re-creation of the making of an early British talkie, we painfully watch the humiliation of the senior Brett when he’s compelled to star in a medium he detests and take abuse from an arrogant, albeit brilliant film director (Patrick Ryecart).

“God, what an uncivilized way to make a living,” groans the veteran stage actor.

At its center, too, the show celebrates the jubilance and glow (however tarnished) of a special multigenerational theatrical family led by Charles and Lydia Brett (deliciously played by Norman Rodway and Barbara Murray in a manner that suggests Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne off stage, without all their posing).

For theater buffs with patience, here are celebrity parents and their four feckless, stage-bound offspring who seem to step straight out of two of the best plays ever written about people breaking a leg: Noel Coward’s “Hay Fever” and George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s “The Royal Family.”

On a historical and cultural level, the creators (Rosemary Anne Sisson and Frank Marshall) colorfully dramatize how the first Equity house contracts spelled the end of the British theatrical institution known as the Actor-Manager.

“Equity leaders are Bolshevik monsters!” bellows Rodway as the elder Brett. “Equity is the end of a tradition of actor-managers going back to Garrick and Shakespeare! Are we to become like factory owners, manufacturing plays and taking orders from union leaders?”

With their obsessive love for the theater, on and off stage, the Bretts are fine company, with their gin rummy games and quiet living-room fires, if you can wait out the dross.

The show also has some nice moments dramatizing the effect of aging on careers and egos. And its throwaway lines pinpoint its sympathy for the live actor. As one character put it, “Film acting is a lot less strenuous than doing a stage play every night.”