January 4, 2002 | According to showbiz legend, Miami Vice came to be after NBC honcho Brandon Tartikoff scribbled a genre-blending high concept on a cocktail napkin: “MTV cops.” It’s easy to imagine that Julian Fellowes, the screenwriter of Gosford Park, had a similar formula tacked to a bulletin board near his word-processor: “Agatha Christie goes Upstairs, Downstairs.”

Blame it on Robert Altman, the film’s director, and Bob Balaban, who pulls double duty as co-star and co-producer. They’re the ones, according to the opening credits, who hatched the “original idea” of combining a standard-issue period whodunit with a seriocomic study of the post-World War I British class system.

Perhaps the inspiration came to them after too many nights of watching too much television – PBS in general, Mystery! and Masterpiece Theater in particular. Or maybe they attended a revival house double bill of Remains of the Day and Murder on the Orient Express. In any event, the end result is a bit like a ponderously elaborate game of Clue, with a stellar cast of most English actors going through their paces like so many live-action tokens on the spiffiest playing board imaginable. Never mind Colonel Mustard in the library – here, we get Helen Mirren in the kitchen, Alan Bates in the pantry, Maggie Smith in the den and Kristin Scott Thomas in the master bedroom.

Throughout the first 80-something minutes of this 137-minute movie, Altman interweaves interconnections among two dozen or so characters, employing short, vaguely portentous scenes and snippets of overlapping dialogue to indirectly provide nuggets of expository and biographical detail. This sort of daisy-chain linkage of narrative elements is nothing new for the director of Nashville and Short Cuts. In Gosford Park, however, Altman works too hard at jugging people and subplots, and the effort shows.

You have to be attentive to every word, every gesture, while registering the headlong rush of information. And to be honest, I still can’t figure out the whys and wherefores of some characters, even after two viewings of the film. But never mind: There’s never any real doubt about where things are going – every so often, we get an ominous close-up of a bottle labeled “Poison” – even if we’re unsure of who’s doing what for whom, and why they want to do it.

The year is 1932, and the place is Gosford Park, the lavish country estate of Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon), a self-made multi-millionaire, and Lady Sylvia McCordle (Kristin Scott Thomas), his conspicuously younger, haughtily beautiful wife.

The occasion is a hunting-party weekend, and the guest list includes, among many others, Constance (Maggie Smith), Lady Sylvia’s snobbish aunt, an impoverished countess who relies on Sir William for a generous allowance; Anthony Meredith (Tom Hollander), Lady Sylvia’s brother-in-law, who desperately needs Sir William’s investment in a dubious business venture; Morris Weissman (Bob Balaban), a visiting Hollywood wheeler-dealer who’s repeatedly introduced as “the producer of the Charlie Chan movies,” and who’s doing research for a London-based chapter in his franchise; and Ivor Novello (Jeremy Northam), a Noel Cowardly bon vivant who’s invited to swanky gatherings to entertain the aristos and their servants.

Upstairs and downstairs, the dedicated Gosford Park staffers include butler Jennings (Alan Bates), first footman George (Richard E. Grant), valet Probert (Derek Jacobi), housekeepers Mrs. Wilson (Helen Mirren) and Mrs. Croft (Eileen Atkins) and head housemaid Elsie (Emily Watson). Among the temporary guests in the servants’ quarters: Mary (Kelly Macdonald), Constance’s new maid, a timid young woman who sees all and says little; Robert (Clive Owen), a taciturn valet who doesn’t look or sound like a chap who’s used to following anyone’s orders; and Henry (Ryan Phillippe), a pretty-boy manservant who’s flexible enough to service – wink-wink, nudge-nudge! -- both Weissman and Lady Sylvia.

Amid the bustling sound and fury of cryptic observations, snappy one-liners and fuzzily-defined relationships, one fact slowly emerges with unambiguous clarity: Sir William is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, a lecherous blowhard who made his fortune by exploiting women in sweatshops – and, after hours, in his bedroom. He so obviously deserves to die that you may actually find yourself growing impatient while waiting for his demise.

After what seems like a very long time, Sir William finally does wind up on the wrong end of a knife. Three questions immediately arise: Who did it? Why? And, perhaps most important, was the deceased already dead when it was done?

In the wake of the murder, Altman introduces Inspector Thompson (Stephen Fry), a fatuously self-regarding nitwit who literally stumbles across, and thereby destroys, several important clues in the course of his investigation. The character, broadly played and poorly written, exists only to provide cheap laughs, and recalls a comparable (but much funnier) caricature Altman used way back in Brewster McCloud (1970) to satirize Steve McQueen’s supercop Bullitt. (Michael Murphy played the caricature – er, I mean, character.) Someone else figures out the solution – or, to be more precise, the solutions – to the central mystery. But the revelatory scenes fail to achieve maximum impact, despite strong efforts by gifted actors, because Altman gives us insufficient reason to make an emotional investment in the responsible parties.

Gosford Park is best enjoyed as an opportunity to see a who’s who of the British film acting community in what amounts to a modestly amusing series of sketch-comedy bits. Maggie Smith is nicely nasty, with a naughty smile that suggests she’s fully aware of just how much scenery she is stealing and chewing. Jeremy Northan is even better as the smooth-moving Novello, a real-life singer-actor-songwriter who performs for the types of aristos that he pretends to be in movies and plays.

In one of the movie’s wittier touches, Northam responds with a precisely pained grimace as a sardonic aristocrat refers to Novello’s appearance in The Lodger, a real 1932 movie that failed really badly. It’s worth noting, by the way, that Novello also appeared in the original 1926 silent version of The Lodger, under the direction of a promising up-and-comer named Alfred Hitchcock. It’s also worth noting that, in 1934, someone else actually did make a movie titled Charlie Chan in London. I haven’t seen it, but I’m willing to bet it’s at least as much fun as Gosford Park.