Hustle (2004)

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1. 

   Siskoid

   Series 1-2: A British TV series about a crew of con men by the makers of Spooks. The first series was fun. It introduced the characters and the style of the show, with cons often explained by breaking the fourth wall. And yet, I could almost always see where it was going, maybe because I've seen so many con films. I'm a Mamet fan, after all. The second series was much better. Now we know and care about the characters, and we know the basic cons, it's all out of the way. What we get are better stories, more complex cons, more improvising from the characters as things fall apart... It's just more exciting and satisfying. Great stuff.
   
   Series 3: If the quality of stories went up between 1 and 2, it stayed more or less the same from 2 to 3. Which isn't a bad thing. 2 and 3 might as well be the same "season". Perhaps a little less kick in its series premiere than 2 or even 1, but the rest is quite good. More fantasy bits - silent film, Bollywood - and that's welcome.
   
   Series 4: I thought things would get dodgy without Adrian Lester's Mickey Stone in the mix (he returns in Series 5), but it gave Marc Warren's Danny Blue a chance to take up the leadership and change the style of the cons a little bit. Rap star replacement Ashely Walters as Billy Bond grows on you, but tends to mumble his lines. One of the best bits this series is that the cast goes to America (Hollywood and Vegas) which is a great place for them to be.
   
   Series 5-8: I was a big fan of the con-heist show Hustle from its first 4 seasons, but they were the only ones available on DVD. Here were are more than 10 years after I first fell in love with it, getting to see the back half thanks to streaming. We've lost a couple of characters in the transition, but the new recruits change the dynamic a little bit, though we're perhaps always missing the chaotic energy of Marc Warren's Danny Blue through these. He was a jackass, but a more worthy punching bag than his raw replacement Shawn. So more cons, more evil villains the crew might not walking away from (some of them a little over-the-top I'll admit), and because we understand the formula, an effort is made to shake things up with amusing or plan-destroying subplots. We sometimes concentrate more on the consequences than the con itself, and so forth. Hustle keeps enough of its freshness through its last four series to please. I never felt there was a significant drop in quality. And nice final episode; there could be worse blow-offs. 2 years 8 months ago

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