Description: Hustle is a British crime drama television series starring Adrian Lester, Robert Glenister and Robert Vaughn. Created by Tony Jordan, it was produced by Kudos Film and Television, and broadcast on BBC One in the United Kingdom. The show premiered on 24 February 2004, and ran for eight series, with its final episode aired on 17 February 2012. The show's premise is on a group of con artists who specialise in "long cons" – extended forms of deceptive frauds that require greater commitment, but offer higher rewards than simple confidence tricks. The show's most notable qualities are plots that involve behind-the-scenes action that the viewers are unaware of until near the end of an episode, along with fantasy scenes and occasional breaches of the fourth wall by the main actors. The show achieved consistently high viewing figures throughout its eight-year run and was received favourably by critics. PLOT Each episode's plot focuses on a team of grifters who conduct the art of the "long con", often targeting a "mark" whose activities are immoral and/or illegal, or whose character retains a fundamental negative personality with others they dislike, or who they make suffer, while adhering to the credo that "you can't cheat an honest man". Although con artists, the team display a moral, honourable code within their team, which include sometimes helping others who have been victims of their mark, often with anonymous financial compensation to them, and never stealing anything that doesn't belong to them, instead borrowing them for the con and then returning them afterwards. For each mark, the team focuses on background research to uncover any issues they may face, as well as a weakness in the mark that they can exploit, such as a passion for something, or an issue they are facing. Once they have a plan, the team set up a scenario, employ a "convincer" to rope in their mark, and then hit them with the sting in which they take them for a sizeable amount of cash, within the tens of thousands, before conducting a "blow-off" to ensure the mark will not come after them, either because they won't if they have to admit to conducting something illegal, or because the team has convinced them it will be impossible to do so. PRODUCTION Conception Hustle was largely born from the same production team that created and popularised the early series of Spooks, a similarly styled drama series first broadcast in 2002. Bharat Nalluri, that series' Executive Director, conceived the idea in early 2002 while filming for the first Spooks series was ongoing. Nalluri pitched the concept to Jane Featherstone, managing director of Kudos Film & Television which was the production company behind Spooks, in the back of a taxi while returning from a day's filming. Intrigued by the idea, Featherstone recruited Tony Jordan, the lead scriptwriter of the soap opera EastEnders, to develop it into a workable proposal. Jordan quickly produced some initial script drafts, which Featherstone took to the BBC; Gareth Neame, Head of Drama Commissioning, rapidly approved a six-part series. Featherstone assembled a production team that had considerable overlap with the Spooks crew, including Simon Crawford Collins as producer and Matthew Graham as co-writer. In creating the first episodes, Jordan drew inspiration from the long tradition of confidence tricks and heists in Hollywood and television, including The A-Team, The Sting and The Grifters (and in a similar vein, the films and TV series of Mission Impossible). Featherstone remarked that "Ocean's Eleven was on around the time Bharat and I first spoke, and I think it helped to inspire us, but really we took our inspiration from a whole catalogue of movies and books ... we wanted to make something that had the energy, verve, style and pure entertainment value of those sorts of films" At the same time, the writers attempted to draw on the success of recent blockbusters such as Ocean's Eleven and Mission: Impossible; speaking in an interview in December 2003, Crawford explained that "[such shows] worked because of the interaction within the group – the plotlines were almost irrelevant". Casting With Hustle greenlit for filming, the production team began searching for actors to play both the main characters and the marks for each episode. The process was initially quite difficult; Crawford described his "immediate thought [as] 'this is so good, how the hell are we going to get a cast to live up to these characters?' ... Tony had created incredibly strong characters, each with their own particular style and panache, but they also had to form a believable, if unusual, 'family' unit". Robert Vaughn, the Academy Award-nominated star of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., was soon suggested as a natural choice to play Albert Stroller, the elderly 'roper' responsible for ensnaring potential marks. After meeting Vaughn over lunch, Crawford "[recognised] straight away that he could bring a whole new dimension to the part of Albert". Vaughn was immediately offered the role, and asked to begin filming the following day. Jordan's script called for a group of five con artists or "grifters", with a wide range of ages, appearances and experience. The production team cast Adrian Lester, at the time playing Henry V at the National Theatre, as Michael Stone, the leader of the group; Marc Warren as Danny Blue, Stone's younger protégé; and Robert Glenister as Ash Morgan, the "fixer"; in August 2003. Although having numerous credits in film and on the stage, Lester was an unknown face in television, having had less than two hours' broadcast screen time prior to the first Hustle series. Lester explained that he "couldn't imagine playing the same character for years, but Hustle was completely different. In the very first rehearsal we were doing a dance routine and then the next thing I know I'm whacking out several different accents and I just thought, 'I'm in heaven, this is great!'" Jaime Murray completed the lead actors, playing Stacie Monroe who, as the grifters' only female member, is self-styled as "the lure". Murray, described by one of the Hustle production team as "that rare specimen – a stunningly beautiful actress who can actually act", and who auditioned in platform shoes to match her 5 ft 7in height with Stacie's description as having "legs that go on for miles", was reportedly "terrified" to be working with the more famous actors Vaughn and Lester, saying "when we were filming the first couple of episodes I was absolutely petrified and was convinced that it would be really obvious on screen. So when I watched some of it on tape I was totally amazed that you couldn't see how frightened I really was. I kept thinking, 'Oh my God! I'm working with Adrian Lester and Robert Vaughn. Any time now someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and ask me to get my coat!'" In addition to the lead actors, the production team recruited a number of actors, both major and minor, to play the marks in each episode; including David Haig, Tamzin Outhwaite, and David Calder. Filming With the cast and crew in place, filming for the first Hustle series took place in London between August and November 2003. The lead actors were given professional instruction in sleight-of-hand and pick-pocketing; "all the tricks of the trade from card-shuffling to stealing watches", according to Lester. The cast found the experience informative; Murray explained, "I realised that most cons are all about diversion – while you're trying to con somebody you're doing something to distract them in the opposite direction so they don't notice and that's exactly how pickpockets work". Several members of the cast described Hustle's filming schedule as incredibly hectic. Vaughn said that "[the role] was offered to me, and I was told to get on a plane an hour after I got the phone call and start shooting the following day." Speaking in 2009 after filming four series of the show, Lester explained that "when we start shooting Hustle we film two episodes concurrently, with the scenes out of sequence. Knowing where you are in the intricate plots at any one moment is ... challenging". Murray, by contrast, claimed that the hardest scene to film was from the fourth episode, when Danny loses spectacularly to Stacie in strip poker and ends up entirely naked. "It was the toughest scene for me of the entire six months we spent filming the series ... Stacie is supposed to be calm, cool and collected ... she looks down, checks him out and casually and suavely makes a comment. I kept looking down, dissolving into fits of laughter and was almost unable to deliver my line. So all you'll see is me laughing". Although the programme typically contains few non-trivial stunts or dramatic special effects, the first episode includes an example of Ash Morgan's favourite con, known as "The Flop": having previously received a fractured skull in a bar brawl, Morgan deliberately steps in front of moving cars and exaggerates the accident. Although not actually hurt, X-ray scans show his fractured skull, and the driver's insurance company pays out a compensation claim. Glenister balked at doing the entire stunt himself, saying "I got a stunt man who did all the smashing against the windscreen stunts but I did everything else ... We all like doing the stunts involving driving fast because it's boy's-own stuff but when it comes to the dangerous stunts I'm quite happy to leave it to someone else!" Release The first episode of the series of Hustle was broadcast on BBC One on 24 February 2004, driven by a strong advertising campaign organised by Abbott Mead Vickers, surrounding its slogan, "The Con is On", the same name as that of the initial episode's title. The programme was an immediate success, attracting over 6.7 million viewers, and attracting favourable reviews (see below). Before the first series had finished airing, the BBC had sold rebroadcast licences to TV channels in twelve countries, including Italy, Norway, Germany, Israel, Russia and the Netherlands. Anita Davison, Commercial Director for BBC Worldwide, claimed that "the series [had] all the hallmarks of a huge international hit". The series was later licensed to broadcasters in India and South America.
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Item Specifics
Returns Accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Case Type: Tall/DVD Case
Former Rental: No
Rating: M
Subtitle Language: None
MPN: Multi Region Player Required To Play Outside Aust & NZ
Studio: Kudos Film & Television And BBC Television
Region Code: DVD: 4 (AU, NZ, Latin America...)
Format: DVD
Release Year: 24 February 2004 – 17 February 2012
Language: English
Actor: Adrian Lester Robert Glenister Matt Di Angelo Kelly Adams, Marc Warren Rob Jarvis Ashley Walters, Robert Vaughn Jaime Murray
Features: Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Movie/TV Title: Hustle (2004 TV series)
Season: Complete Series Eight (6 Episodes)
Video Format: PAL
Music Artist: Theme music composer Simon Rogers
Sub-Genre: Mystery
Director: Alrick Riley, Otto Bathurst, Roger Goldby, Bharat Nalluri, Rob Bailey, John McKay, Adrian Lester, Sarah O'Gorman, Luke Watson, Colin Teague, Julian Simpson, James Strong, Iain B. MacDonald, Colm McCarthy, Lee MacIntosh, Stefan Schwartz, Minkie Spiro, John Strickland, S.J. Clarkson
Cinematic Movement: Arthouse/Independent
Franchise: Hustle
Edition: Standard Edition
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Type: TV Series
Producer: Karen Wilson Howard Burch Tony Jordan Simon Crawford Collins
Genre: Crime, Drama
Run Time: 350 Minutes
Country/Region of Manufacture: United Kingdom
