To the short list of television shows focused on prostitution — “Hung,” “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” “The Girlfriend Experience” — add “Harlots,” an eight-episode British costume extravaganza that started this week on Hulu. If the cool minimalism of Steven Soderbergh’s “Girlfriend Experience” isn’t your thing, then the strenuously theatrical “Harlots” (keywords “bawdy” and “voluptuous”) might be more your speed.

Starring a pair of fine actresses, Samantha Morton and Lesley Manville, as rival brothel owners in 1763 London, the show walks a fine line between empowerment (sex work as a choice more liberating than marriage or poverty-level employment) and victimization.

Accomplishing that in a way that isn’t just depressing or infuriating involves turning the profession and the time period into a raucous combination of pageant and farce. “Harlots” doesn’t shy away from doubt, sorrow and the straightforward presentation of appalling exploitation, but it doesn’t linger on them — it always moves right along to the next scene of intrigue and competition between brothels, or the next bit of comic business involving the desperate buffoonery of the male customers. All against a backdrop of jolly sex and nudity, mostly by extras.

The show’s creators — the accomplished and ambitious playwright and screenwriter Moira Buffini and the actress Alison Newman — set an unflagging pace in the two episodes available for review, with dialogue that’s sufficiently crisp and performances that are entertaining enough to keep you interested, even if the story feels a little hollow at the core.