The show, which comes to the end of its run on Thursday, has been enjoying ratings of 5.5 million, thanks to a revamped line-up, and the return of Adrian Lester to the cast.

Hustle creator, writer and executive producer, Tony Jordan says: “We are really pleased with the way that series five has been received, it’s always difficult to maintain a drama’s following when you’ve been off air for a period of time. Having a fabulous actor like Adrian Lester back in the fold has really helped. I’ve already got some great ideas for series six, so I can’t wait to get cracking on the scripts.”

Karen Wilson, executive producer for Kudos says: “Viewers really enjoy the vibrant and fun nature of Hustle and we plan to continue with that into the next series. The current series has featured a great mix of old and new, with the staple classics of Robert Vaughn and Robert Glenister and it’s been wonderful to have Adrian back. And the new additions of Matt Di Angelo and Kelly Adams have added a new dimension as well as an extra bit of glamour!”

Fair point. Although you could argue staying gratis in a ridiculously lavish hotel is a tad over-indulgent.

City shitters

The Hustle bustle

Yep, it’s Hustle and five series in, the moral compass is still a-whirl. New recruit Emma asks Mickey – after he’s tagged some evil cartoon city types whose cartoon dastardliness has prompted a cartoon suicide – “Do you always get emotionally involved with your marks?”‘. “If I don’t,” he replies, “it’s just about the money.”

But it’s hard to believe that with an icy Adrian Lester so passionless in the lead role. You know what? A little more emotional involvement wouldn’t go amiss here.

Undeterred, Hustle keeps laying it on thick, positioning the gang as an ersatz family. There’s Mickey as dad, Ash a resourceful uncle and Albert (much missed in this episode) an absent, rogue granddad. Emma and Sean, meanwhile, are the newly adopted orphans. They were “farmed out as kids” and she’s “trying to save up enough to send him to drama school.” The thing is, this is a family who take every opportunity to demean and defraud guileless barkeeper and comic foil Eddie (a running gag that’s always been the show’s most misjudged element). “Ah, he loves it,” says Ash, unconvincingly.

h2-slo-mo

The generations not-gapped

Hold up, though. Let’s stop moaning about all this misdirected morality. It’s there simply to grease the mechanics of a show that’s all about wrongdoing – and doing it inventively. Inventiveness, in fact, is something Hustle has bags of. It oozes across every scene, the production team pulling out impressive stops to gild the innumerable moments of exposition.

 As Mickey briefs his troops on the latest marks (and, Adam James, why does your agent continually put you up for roles as spineless city shits?), the show slips into a faux-Heroes tableaux – one city shit throwing a glass of water over another city shit, all in glorious slo-mo.

Plot wise, it’s an equally rich mix. Sean is undergoing a classic apprentice’s journey, while bits nabbed from Derren Brown (auto suggestion), Jonathan Creek (a stolen painting that hasn’t actually been stolen), and – yep – Ocean’s Eleven (attempting to nick the unnickable) crackle away nicely.

Plus, tonight’s episode presented a noticeably less smug package than before. In part this was thanks to those new additions, Matt Di Angelo (Sean) and Kelly Adams (Emma), who bring a fresh faced, callow kind of innocence to the show. So innocent and callow, in fact, the flirting between Mickey and Emma felt like an ill-advised bridging exercise across a mighty generation gap. The hour was also notable for – unless I’m mistaken – there being no mugging shots straight into camera. Sure, those moments are supposed to make you feel complicit in the scheme, but sometimes they come across more as an invitation to punch out the screen.

I’m being quite hard on Hustle, really, and it doesn’t deserve it. If this was 40 years ago, Lew Grade would have commissioned it in an instant (and, funnily enough, the gang do seem to be living in sight of an ITC-style backdrop). It’s a funny programme – often very funny – and works hard during every minute of screen time.

But it is all about the money.

Well, here’s the press release.

Adrian Lester returns to the role of Mickey ‘Bricks’ Stone for the fifth series of the hit con drama, Hustle, from Kudos Film and Television in association with Red Planet Pictures for transmission on BBC One next year. Robert Glenister and Robert Vaughn also return as Mickey’s fellow con artists, Ash ‘Three Socks’ Morgan and Albert Stroller.

Following his stint in Australia selling the Sydney Opera House to an unsuspecting punter, Mickey has returned to a new London. The credit crunch has hit Britain and while the majority of the nation are tightening their belts, there are still a scurrilous and greedy few who are getting ever richer from others losses – the perfect marks for the best grifter in the business – and Mickey is keen to put new and inventive plans into action to extract their cash!

However, it’s not just the financial state of the nation that has seen a change; Mickey’s crew is looking somewhat depleted too. Ash is back to short cons whilst Danny and Stacey are grifting their way across America. Even Mickey’s old friend and mentor, Albert, seems to have disappeared but Mickey soon finds that he has finally been busted and is currently detained at her majesty’s pleasure.

However, far from desperate to get out of prison, Albert is living the life of Riley; catching up on his reading, playing cards with the guards and watching his favourite TV shows! But the art of the long con is in his blood and naturally has a few marks up his sleeve, ready and waiting to be relieved of their cash.

Mickey is determined that he and Ash get a new crew together but with Albert’s tip off for a potential mark ready for the taking they have more pressing matters at hand, starting with an obnoxious young woman who’s made a killing in dubious property developments…

Adrian Lester says: “It’s great to finally get back into Mickey’s shoes after a very busy couple of years both here and in the US. Tony [Jordan] and I have been discussing all sorts of stories and ideas for the next series and he has written some brilliant scripts with some classic twists – I’m already practicing my pick pocketing!”

Hustle creator, writer and, for this new series, executive producer, Tony Jordan says: “After a year’s break it’s so exciting to come up with new cons for Mickey and the gang to pull on a myriad of greedy scumbags.

“Whilst Mickey has been away working the ultimate long con in Oz, his crew have all gone their separate ways. So, now he’s back in blighty, Mickey’s intent on getting back to business because as long as there is someone who wants something for nothing, Mickey will be there, happy to take a great deal of money off their hands for nothing in return.”

Karen Wilson, executive producer for Kudos says: “It’s a great privilege to have Adrian back in the Hustle fold alongside audience favourites Robert Glenister and Robert Vaughn. Mickey and Ash have their work cut out conning a new set of ‘victims’ when their legendary roper is in the clink but if anyone can do it Mickey Bricks can! ”
Polly Hill, Commissioning Editor of Independent Drama, say: “We are delighted that Adrian Lester returns to Hustle as Mickey Bricks.

“Tony Jordan’s wonderful scripts see him return to a different London but using the same delicious scams. This series promises to offer everything that we love about Hustle but with an exciting new twist.”

The new series of Hustle will start filming in and around London this summer for transmission on BBC One in 2009.

Wot, no mention of Ashley Walters?

Whilst there is nothing at all wrong with programmes that entertain by holding up a mirror to society and confronting the myriad of problems many people endure, there’s also room for a series that sees no shame in presenting brilliantly conceived yarns, draped in slick direction, shamelessly over-the-top acting and immaculate dialogue.

Hustle provides all of this with great pride, and doesn’t care who knows it. After this first episode’s opening gambit, which reunites our happy band of professional “grifters”, in a swanky hotel that will become their operational base, Adrian Lester, in his role as Mickey Stone, delivers the line, “OK, let’s do what we do best.” It seems to be more than a reference to the confidence tricks pulled by the group; it could have also doubled-up as a self-satisfied boast from the writer regarding the quality of what’s on offer.

The show is unusual in today’s “what happens next” style of drama that has become prevalent of late. There is no need to dangle a juicy little tidbit from the following week’s episode at the end, here. All that’s required to keep the viewer watching for an hour is encapsulated in standalone stories that traditionally have a beginning, middle and an end. It’s ability to entertain for those 60 minutes is enough to ensure you will find yourself watching same time next week, and if you happen to miss it, you will not be completely lost when you tune in again.

For this second series, things were reassuringly the same. It would have been a mistake to try and stray from the show’s workable format by coming back as an all-new improved version of what was presented before, as many strive to do. When you buy a candy floss at the funfair, you don’t want it to taste any different to the last one. You want the sugar rush and the sweet sickly adrenalin. With Hustle, you want the gang to target their “mark” – usually a self-centred, smug, greedy city whiz kid who deserves to be stung. You want to see them plan their long-con, adopt their flimsy disguises and even flimsier accents; You want there to be a short series of mishaps and scrapes along the way with hilarious consequences; You want cars parked in side streets visible to all but those that would benefit from seeing them; You want the plan to look as though it’s all going to go terribly wrong, only for one of the gang – usually the one who was against the whole scheme in the first place – to step in at the last moment and save the day.

All were present and correct in episode one, involving a plot to fleece a smug, greedy city whiz-kid, Howard Jennings, by convincing him there was a goldmine under a scrap merchant’s in London. He had successfully foiled a plot to con him previously by old-time grifter Harry Holmes, resulting in his imprisonment. Danny, ever the cocksure rookie, was convinced they could sting him successfully, against the advice of his more experienced companions. This was against the “rules” – to try and work a con on someone who has sussed out previous attempts. Danny, of course, saw his colleagues’ reticence as a further challenge, and set off to prove the others wrong. Cue, the con, which unraveled as expected (flimsy disguises, accents, mishaps, et al) – before the plan looked like it was all going terribly wrong, until someone did indeed step in and salvage the situation.

The final scene, as ever, took place in Eddie’s Bar, where they counted out the money they had accumulated, laughed like they have just caught the baddies in Scooby Doo, and one of them suggested a ludicrous idea for their next “job”.

Same old candy floss? Inevitably. Same time next week? You bet!

Which is just as well as it desperately needs to be since the dialogue and plot are utter rubbish – to paraphrase The Young Ones, I’m not saying that last night’s story was predictable but there is a tribe of Amazonian Indians who, despite having never had any contact with the outside world, clearly saw that one coming. But despite the dire script, Hustle works. The cast is vibrant and there is an excellent sense of on-screen chemistry between them. The direction is pacy and assured and, on the whole, the overall look of the show is very pleasing on the eye. A lot of effort has evidently gone into the programme and it shows; the homage paid to the likes of Mission: Impossible and The Persuaders is verging on the reverential but it’s genuinely welcoming to watch a programme that is imbued with a similar set of values and an ethos to match. This is a show where the mission statement reads simply “We will entertain you” – and entertain the viewing public they indeed do.

Clearly, the team behind the Hustle have learned a lot from their previous vehicle, Spooks – a show which I must confess to having found irksome to the point of loathsome (incidentally, a good friend in the intelligence services relayed a tale to me of how, when watching Spooks in the officers’ mess, the assembled crowd were divided into two partisan camps – one who found it an utter insult to their profession and the other who viewed it as being utterly hilarious unconscious comedy) and thus, I really expected to hate the insufferably trailed Hustle from the opening episode. But instead I found myself being captivated by its not inconsiderable charms.

Yet that this is set against, arguably, the worst script on television – which in a time of Murder in Suburbia and Inspector Lynley is really saying something. The writing is risible and some of the dialogue defies belief – banal doesn’t even come close to accurately describing how truly awful it is. The clichéd line of “there’s one born every minute” predictably (and tragically) has already made an early appearance and there’s surely more such tosh to come. On the BBC website, the show’s producer, Simon Crawford Collins, says that the script is the key. If that’s true, then God only knows what lies behind that locked door. To call the characters one-dimensional and screamingly obvious would be an injustice; they’re not even that well developed. The cockney fixer, the experienced con, the young pup – all the worn out clichéd types are here, wearing their paper thin hearts on their sleeves. This is risible stuff and insulting to the viewer as well as the actors. The writing isn’t half as clever it thinks it is – it’s not even a fraction that smart. That the likes of Tony Jordan and Howard Brenton are involved with rubbish like this is a surprise to me. Make no mistake, this is – to be perfectly blunt – crap writing, crap characterisation and crap plotting. Spot a theme developing here?

However the cast gamely carries on oblivious to the deficiencies of the script and turn in some cracking performances. Robert Vaughan plays Robert Vaughan to total perfection and is, quite simply, a god amongst men. The man doesn’t merely walk – he effortlessly glides across the screen like the louche, lounge lizard we all want him to be. He charms, he colludes, and he exudes with a natural fluidity that belies someone of his age. I really believe that when he exits our screens during Hustle, he’s off to give Thrush a good kicking before his next scene. Adrian Lester also deserves praise for his portrayal of Mickey Stone, bringing to the screen a lovely sense of elegant understatement. The rest of the cast, as I said, have a great on-screen chemistry and, as a team, they work well together.

Once again, this is despite the writing. Last night’s episode in which Mickey responded to a thief with a heart was tired and plain terrible. The constant repeating and underlining that his (Stone’s) father was a hard working man who worked hard all his life and for what? is aurally grating and insulting to the viewer – all we need is a poster of Charlie Sheen or Gordon Gekko in the background to hammer it home. Indeed, the constant shoehorning in of points of reference is incredibly tiresome. Wall Street, Heat, The Sting – they’re all here (and then some) and all referenced with not a drop of subtlety or sly grace. If the production team want to see how it’s done properly then they should watch a couple of episodes of Frasier, a show in which innumerable references are made, and all are executed with unbelievable style and all are correctly framed. Staying on that side of the pond for a moment, the cast would also do well to soak up Malcolm in the Middle for a master class in breaking the fourth wall. But these are flaws that can be ironed out when the second series comes round, as it inevitably will.

If you can suspend disbelief and ignore the ridiculous plots (which have – to abuse yet another cliché – more holes than Rab C Nesbitt’s string vest), disregard the absurd characterisation and turn a blind eye to the most hackneyed dialogue you’re likely to hear this decade, then you’re rewarded with a charmingly superficial slice of nonsense that is delightfully entertaining and instantly disposable. Hustle is the Milky Way of television; the treat you can watch between programmes without ruining your appetite.

Opening with a title sequence that is colourful and cartoony and has a distinctly retro feel, Hustle could have come straight from the television heyday of the 1970s. Fitting then, that one of the main cast is played by Robert Vaughan, as Hustle combines both the style and suave of those old ITC productions, with the modern crime caper as displayed in films such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Ocean’s Eleven.

Unlike a lot of British crime drama Hustle is not dark and gloomy all of the time, with characters lurking down alleyways; most of the scenes are presented in bright summer daylight. The production team at Kudos have clearly gone for a self-consciously cool feel for the show, and despite being about criminal activity it looks as if it is going to turn out be a very light-hearted programme. An unashamed veneration of felony is the order of the day here. The con-artists are presented very much so just as that – artists. There is a slick, smart quality to their crimes and they would rather not go in for “common” misdemeanours. Hopefully Kudos will not overplay the element of cool, though, as it is laid on quite heavily at times. It looks good, but hopefully this aspect will not be the main focus of the storytelling.

The plot, such as it is, begins with the recent release from prison of professional con-man Michael “Micky Bricks” Stone. He is seeking to reassemble his old team of villains to carry out another “long con”. Teaming up with colleagues Albert Stroller (Vaughan), Ash Morgan (Robert Glenister), Stacie Monroe (Jaime Murray) and newcomer Danny Blue (Marc Warren) they set about ensnaring a greedy business and liberating him of a substantial amount of his money. And it is quite clever how they go about it. Using the older, plausible Stroller as bait, the businessman is craftily lured into their scam via the simple ploy of having Stroller drop something next to him in a bar. From then on, Williams is hooked – the audience knows it and Stone’s gang know it. He falls for everything that the gang put to him, purely and simply because of his avarice: as Stroller says at one point “he’d cross the road for a pound coin”. This gang only plays for high stakes, only conning people who can afford to be conned and due to their greed probably ought to be conned – the victim here is shown to get what he deserves. He loses his £100,000 and very nearly his reputation. Don’t expect to see the ordinary man in the street becoming a target for this bunch.

As the programme comes from the pen of prolific soap scribe Tony Jordan there are elements of that genre present in Hustle. There is a history between Stone and Monroe, and the team has a clear family-style dynamic. There is a hint too, that Danny will make a move on Monroe at some point, although with any luck the makers will not go down this route too far as it would sink the show from the realms of entertainment into soap.

Vaughan is real casting coup. As Albert Stroller he is excellent, and comes across both as a credible crook and businessman-type – just the kind of person that is required for these forms of scam. Lester too is good, and plays Stone in such a way that you find it hard to believe that the crime for which he was imprisoned was assault. Even when he pulls a pistol on the police near the end of the episode he just does not seem to be the violent type (and as we later find out, it was all part of an act). Marc Warren plays a similar kind of character to the one he portrayed in State of Play, although much more clued-up and less timorous than he was there. Danny Blue is the cocky young member of the gang who blags his way into the set-up without an invitation, and is replete with a full array of crafty card tricks and “short cons”. Robert Glenister and relative newcomer Jaime Murray round out the principal cast, with Glenister’s character taking the role of fixer, and Murray’s that of banker.

And hands up anybody who thought that the twist of having Micky “shot” was all part of a cunning marketing scam like the one that was used in Spooks when Lisa Faulkner’s character was deep fried? Surely they weren’t going to employ a top actor like Adrian Lester and then kill him off in the first episode? The use of a fake cop who is in on the scam was totally unpredictable and worked magnificently, in a large part due to the believability of the actor who played the policeman. He came across as your typical telly plod so plausibly that the twist came completely out of the blue. Who would have thought that messing about with a pair of watermelons could be put to such a clever use?

All that is missing here, that was present in those 1970s programmes, is the international jet-setting that the protagonists then tended to get up to, but that might well come later (although they will probably get further than the studio backlot in this series!) Great, daft, drama and after the success that was Spooks, Hustle is sure to gain more kudos for Kudos.