Hustle (TV series)
Hustle is a British television crime drama 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 most notable qualities is on plots that involve behind-the-scenes action that the viewers are unaware of until near the end of an episode, as well as fantasy scenes and occasional breaches of the fourth wall by the main actors.
Hustle (TV series)
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 ""; 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".