Hustle – The Complete Third Season
The con is back on! Hustle, the slick and stylish BBC drama series following the exploits of London’s finest con artist collective returns to DVD when Warner Home Video releases The Complete Third Season on 23rd April 2007. Hustle is the ultra-slick and stylish show in which five expert London con artists combine their different talents to pull off a series of daring and intricate stings against the greedy, the morally corrupt and those who thoroughly deserve to get stung!
The crew only targets the bad guys and is strictly major league – so no conning little old ladies out of their savings. London's seediest and most stylish locations form their playground as this is where the best marks can be found: remember, the first rule of Hustle is that it is impossible to con an honest person.
The original Hustle team gets together one more time for Season Three: Mickey (Adrian Lester), master of the dying art of the long con and godfather of the gang; Danny (Marc Warren), young, hungry and determined to prove he’s got what it takes; Albert (Robert Vaughn), the most experienced member of the team and the best in the business at identifying the ‘mark’; Ash (Robert Glenister), an expert ‘fixer’ crucial in establishing each con’s convincing back story; and the beautiful, seductive, streetwise Stacie (Jaime Murray).
In addition to the regular stars of Hustle, Season Three also includes memorable guest-star performances from talents as diverse as Mel Smith, Linford Christie, Sara Cox, Richard Chamberlain, Paul Kaye and Paul Nicholls.
Fans of the show, which drew an average on 5.8million viewers when shown on BBC1, will recognise even more of Hustle’s signature dream sequences, freeze frames and fantasy set-pieces in Season Three. Used to explain and enhance the cons as they happen, these scenes are shot with the very highest production values and give the show its unmistakeably slick appearance: the Bollywood dance sequence, the parachute drop and Danny and Mickey running naked across Trafalgar Square are all classic Hustle moments.
Also included on the season 3 DVD is the featurette It’s Just Like Playing, in which the cast drop their tough-guy Hustle personas to chat informally about their filming experiences, favourite scenes, their closeness as a group and the difficulties posed by the very challenging Hustle filming schedule.
Episode 1 – An expensive mistake by Danny means the gang are back from Las Vegas, flat broke and desperate to get back into the game. The new mark is pub owner & gangster Benny Frazier (Mel Smith) who lets slip that he will do whatever it takes to make his wannabe-rapper son a star. Also features Linford Christie and Sara Cox.
Episode 2 – The power struggle between Mickey and Danny comes to a head and has to be resolved – and what more honourable way (among thieves of course!) to settle the dispute than the greatest test of a grifter’s skill: The Henderson Challenge? So Mickey and Danny are dropped off – naked as the day they were born – in Trafalgar Square with six hours to make it to their meeting point with as many blagged items as possible.
Episode 3 – A complicated financial scam offers the opportunity to clean out a greedy banker, while the chance to con a visiting American scammer (Richard Chamberlain) is too good to resist. But he’s sure to be double crossing the gang at the same time, after all the greatest con of all is to con another grifter…
Episode 4 – A rich, unprincipled sweatshop owner with a predilection for Bollywood films is the subject of the team’s next scam, but with little knowledge of the world of Bollywood can Mickey, Stacie and Ash pull the wool over the mark’s eyes? A road accident appears to throw a spanner in the works but can anyone work out who is conning who?
Episode 5 – The con becomes a point of honour for Stacie when her best friend is stung by a false tabloid exposé. Intent on revealing the editor and reporter’s lack of morals, the gang tempts the marks in with the one thing they can’t resist: a juicy exclusive with a royal twist. Guest starring Paul Kaye.
Episode 6 – The law finally catches up with the Hustle crew, but a bent copper offer them an unusual escape clause – first they must help catch The Ghost (Paul Nicholls), a notorious thief whose next job is stealing a manuscript from a country house. The gang attempt to turn the tables on the law by joining forces with The Ghost, but can they outwit the bent policeman and his legitimate colleagues and still get away with their prize?
Hustle – The Complete Third Season
23rd April 2007
2 discs, DVD Retail, Cert 15, 330 mins
