A cut-rate Polish work crew slips into wintry 1981 London to do an off-the-books home renovation in “Moonlighting,” Jerzy Skolimowski’s droll and intimate comment on capitalism, the collapse of communism and the horrors of cut-rate home repair.

It’s one of the great snapshots in time of the early 1980s. Released over ten years before the “one Europe” Maastricht Treaty, it shows us how the East exploited Western loopholes, and xenophobic Londoners turned a blind eye — well, the shopkeepers and better-off homeowners did, anyway.

And the film made a grand star vehicle for Jeremy Irons, fresh on the heels of his “Brideshead Revisited” TV breakout. He plays the one Pole who speaks English in a quartet slipped into Britain by an unseen Polish plutocrat to restore the rich Pole’s three story townhouse in Hammersmith.

Irons may be the most dashing home renovator this side of HGTV, a Pole with the poshest English accent ever. And one can tell from the way Nowak, his character, takes a swipe at demolition and mishandles a saw that here’s one actor who never helped build or strike a stage set.

But as he narrates this misadventure, jotting down details in the ledger book “the boss” insists he keep, we learn exactly why this “master electrician” is here and in charge. He speaks English and will do all the lying to customs, negotiating with vendors and placating neighbors.

“I can speak their language, this is why the boss chose for me for the job,” he narrates. “But I don’t know what they really mean.”

Being the lone English speaker and reader gives Nowak “control,” like “The State,” back home. He keeps the three men — Eugene Lipinski, Jiri Stanlislav and Eugeniusz Haczkiewicz — on a rigid schedule, feeds them on a tight budget and allows them one visit to a phone box on the corner per week to hear from home. But with Poland roiled by the Solidarity movement that would bring about the fall of the Soviet Empire, Nowak’s “control” over these “stupid” men may have limits.

How will they maintain their subterfuge, rush through their one month “no work/no employment” visas project and stay on task when there’s a coup in The Motherland? Will he tell them?

Manual labor notwithstanding, a better title for “Moonlighting” might have been “Shoplifting.” Local Brits take advantage of the Poles, who are in the country under false pretenses, “stealing” jobs from working class Brits and undercutting their prices. They’re able to do that because communist country currencies were nearly worthless as they had no “consumer economy” back home.

Nowak’s “control” of his work crew really starts to slip as the money runs low and he has to start stealing to feed them. They’ve already been ripped off by an Indo-Pakistani used TV dealer. Nowak has the team’s bicycle stolen. So he steals another and repaints it. He can’t get “news” from home, and keep it from the others, without stealing the neighbor’s newspaper.

And if anybody back home expects gifts on this crew’s return, more pilfering may be in order.

The Brits sell them some inferior goods, try to catch Nowak in the act of shoplifting and sneak their own rubbish into the rented “skip” they hire for the demolition. Everybody cheats everybody.

When “Moonlighting” came out, Skolimowski made a big deal out of the fact that his own expat home in London’s Kensington was being renovated while the movie was being shot. That sharpened his script’s sense of the not-exactly-victimless crimes being committed in those lean, hard anti-union Thatcher years.

The movie breaks one of screenwriting guru Robert McKee’s fundamental laws of “story.” Nowak, being the only English speaker, has exchanges with neighbors irate over the noise and mess they’re making, shopkeepers and shopgirls. But the entire “narrative” is related in voice-over.

That emphasizes Nowak’s isolation, his ignorance of how capitalism “works” and his paranoia that the men he manipulates a dozen ways, including resetting his watch to reduce their sleep time, will find him out and either go on strike or have their revenge in more direct means. Nowak’s paranoia extends to his girlfriend “Anna” back home. Who is keeping her company while he is away?

Irons has the right voice to carry this narrative, soft and somber and weary. Nowak carries the resignation of all of Eastern Europe in that voice, trapped in a life that won’t get better, uninvolved and thus hapless with regards to the changes that were beginning as this film was being shot and during its release.

Skolimowski never made another film remotely as good as “Moonlighting.” But with this movie at this moment in history he conjured up a parable for its time that stands the test of time.

East or West, working people who surrender “control” of their work and their lives to others are victims of the limitations and agenda of the State or The Boss. Back then, millions upon millions recognized that as the ultimate restriction on their liberty.

Rating: PG

Cast: Jeremy Irons, Eugene Lipinski, Jiri Stanlislav, Denis Holmes and Eugeniusz Haczkiewicz.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. A Universal Classics release on Tubi, other streamers.

Running time: 1:37