Margo Martindale, one of the grande dames of American character actresses, gets her best starring role in forever in “The Sticky,” a Quebec-set comedy about intrigues, betrayal, corruption and murder, all of it spinning around an infamous piece of Quebec history — the theft of brown gold, Canadian maple syrup, in mass quantities.

It’s bloody and it’s mean — pretty much nobody with a French Canadian accent comes off well, and “American” accents are all mobsters — and it’s laugh-out-loud hilarious at times.

A couple of screenwriters from “American Housewife,” Brian Donovan and Ed Herro, cooked up this dizzy, dark bit of fiction, “absolutely not the true story of the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist,” a credit before each episode reminds us. But who didn’t hear about the “real” heist at the time (2011/12) and laugh? I distinctly remember an NPR piece on it leaving me in stitches.

Martindale plays Ruth, a struggling maple tree-tapper trying to keep the farm and take care of her comatose husband at home. That’s hard, because a corrupt Quebecois father (Guy Nadon) and inherit-his-title son (Mickaël Gouin) run the local co-op/cartel (Association Érable du Québec) which weighs, stores and sells their sap for syrup, controlling both the price charged and how much the farmers there get for their tree-tapping labors.

Ruth struggles because the kingpin Leonard (Nadon) is determined to squeeze her out. That’s made her ill-tempered and foul-mouthed. Even the ever-placating son Leo (Gouin) of that kingpin can’t talk her out of doing things like sawing down a maple, dragging it through town with her truck, screaming obscenities and threats at Leonard as she does.

Ruth has ties to a frequent out of town visitor, Mike (Chris Diamantopoulos of “Red Notice” and “The Boys in the Boat”). And Mike’s a part of a Boston-based mob operation.

Mike’s the guy syrup warehouse guard Remy (Guillaume Cyr) approaches with a plan — steal a few barrels out of the $150 million hoard in the co-op’s warehouse. Mike sees dollar signs, and being from The States, has a pistol with a silencer, and isn’t shy about violence of any type.

The running gags in this series’ elaborately unraveling plot have to do with how nothing goes right, how Remy — nicknamed “Boo Radley” at one point — is nobody’s idea of a mastermind and Mike’s solution to every problem is terminal violence and how little patience co-conspirator Ruth has for all this.

“I can’t keep plannin’ around all the STUPID,” she bellows, between profane tirades. “What did I SAY about sayin’ dumb sh–?”

Schemes are advanced, evidence is planted and an out of town detective (Suzanne Clément) shows up to insult the local Sûreté du Québec cop (Gita Miller) and get to the bottom of this hick town’s first murder, and quick.

And sooner or later, with all this money on the table and Mike an impulsive liability, you just know somebody from Boston will have to come and “clean up your mess.” Bo is played with bravado and grand abandon by Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis, a producer on the series.

The laughs aren’t exactly fast and furious, but they do come at a fairly steady pace. The problem-solving and complications thrown into the scripts for these six episodes is fun.

“Sticky” is handicapped by a few shortcomings in the limited series format — a tendency to draw limited action into a series of cliffhangers, and the determination to leave things open-ended enough to set up more seasons of this oozing, supersweet “Ozark” variation, no matter how clumsy and unrealistically that’s handled.

But Martindale is in rare form, surrounded by a parade of supporting players portraying a lot of folks on a sliding annoying-hateful-vile scale. And the milieu, with fur trapping, mink farming (and killing) and a strip club that features a pretty good buffet, is an amusing place to visit, especially during a cold stretch during this winter of snow and ice and discontent.

Rating: TV 16+, violence, profanity, strip club scene

Cast: Margo Martindale, Chris Diamantopoulos, Guillaume Cyr, Gita Miller, Suzanne Clément, Guy Nadon and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Credits: Created by Brian Donovan and Ed Herro. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 6 episodes @ 30 minutes each