The Communist Party is promoting the series to set the mood for a leaders’ meeting starting on Monday that will lay down more stringent rules for members and officials. In many areas, they have been ordered to watch the show. And its hero is undoubtedly Mr. Xi, the only nondisgraced leader to be featured. He is described as spartan, humble and happy with a simple diet.

“Hold high a sharp saber against corruption,” Mr. Xi intones on the show. “Corrupt elements will be investigated and dealt with as they’re uncovered. Corruption must be punished. Graft must be purged.”

But viewers of Chinese television already get to see plenty of Mr. Xi in each news broadcast. For them, the main interest in the series has been the sight of once-mighty officials humbled and imprisoned.

It is an established part of China’s political stagecraft to parade disgraced officials on the state news media. But this series shows more than usual. The dyed jet-black hair the leaders had while in office — the customary sign of vigor for the cadre — has often turned gray and straggly in prison.

Some seem truly anguished.

“The wrong lies with me,” Li Chuncheng, the former party secretary of the southwestern city of Chengdu, confesses in sobs. “What was I doing all this time? You know, based on the usual retirement age, I was close to the end of my career. But because of my own mistakes, I’ve ended up like this. What a tragedy.”

Before the tragedy, though, there was plenty of indulgence. The documentary serves, inadvertently, as a guide to how Communist cadres got away with playboy millionaires’ lifestyles while preaching clean living and probity.