Hustle (TV Series) - Format

Format

Each one-hour programme follows the team of grifters as they practise the "long con", an extended deception practised against one or more "marks". Speaking in a documentary video, Adrian Lester described the difference between the long con and more common confidence tricks: "where you take a mark and convince them of a certain situation or a lie, and you send them away to get more money and come back and give it to you". In the first series, Stacie explains to Danny the reason such long cons tend to work: unlike the more obvious short cons, "most marks don't report a con because they think they've done something illegal, or better still, they don't know they've been conned in the first place".

The team adhere to the credo "you can't cheat an honest man", with all of their marks being people who have some kind of illegal activity in their pasts or simply demonstrating a fundamentally negative personality; in one episode, Mickey stated that he selects marks that he personally has reason to dislike in order to ensure that the con is never exclusively about the money. Some episodes have even featured the crew performing cons that benefit people they have befriended over the course of the episode rather than having them be the sole benefactors of the con; examples include them faking a jewel theft from the Tower of London and allowed a member of the cleaning staff to discover it after she showed sympathy for team member Ash Morgan while he was working undercover as an immigrant worker (Eye of the Beholder), leaving the money stolen from a highly secure slot machine in a casino to a security guard at the casino who had advised Stacie Monroe during her brief employment (Big Daddy Calling), stating that they will 'return' an apparently stolen painting only after the rights to the security system that protected it had been returned to the wife of the original inventor (The inventor having committed suicide after he was cheated out of the patent) (New Recruits), and arranging for the niece of a friend to get a modelling contract with an agency that has a rivalry with the company that cheated her out of her money in her original application.

The series frequently breaks the fourth wall (usually at least once per episode) and uses cutaway scenes shot in a different style from the rest of the show. For example, in several episodes the characters appear to "stop time", interacting with other characters that are frozen in place, discussing the con either with each other, or even with the audience. The technique is used as a metaphor for how the main characters manipulate their environment at will, as opposed to normal people who are oblivious to what is going on. Examples of this can be seen in the pilot episode (The Con Is On), the first episode of the second series (Gold Mine) and the second episode of the fourth series (Signing Up to Wealth). Other fourth wall-breaking moments are more subtle – a character smiles at the camera as the con begins to take shape, or makes an editorial comment to the viewers. Some episodes insert fantasy sequences – scenes shot like a Bollywood musical or a silent movie, for example.

Each episode also amounts to a confidence game played upon the viewers through the use of misdirection and hidden plot details that are revealed at the end of the story. Not all cons depicted are successful, and some episodes focus on the characters dealing with the consequences of their actions. However, even if a con does fail, the characters usually come out on top in some way or other.

In addition to one long con, each episode features a number of short cons played by the major characters on members of the public. The short cons demonstrate the seemingly endless array of tricks professional con men possess and the ease with which short cons can be played.

Each episode of Hustle is a stand-alone program, with usually little or no connection to other episodes in the series; however, it has contained some continuity before, for example:

• An ongoing storyline of Mickey's wife wanting a divorce and a settlement in the second and third episodes of the first series.
• The team going on a holiday at the end of the first series and returning at the start of the second.
• The team being caught using a fake credit card and having to vacate their hotel place at the end of the second series and still being homeless at the start of the third.
• Billy gradually moving up in his position in the team during the fourth series.
• Mickey going to Australia at the start of series 4 to sell the Sydney Opera House and getting caught doing it, then escaping back to England in series 5.
• A police officer featured in the first episode of series one trying to arrest the team headed by a fake police officer whom the team had hired, she later appeared in the last episode of series two when she was recruited for the same job due to her prior knowledge.
• In series 5, the team conned Harry Fielding and Carlton Wood, two obnoxious businessmen, out of £500,000. The two returned to con back the gang in the series 5 finale. However Mickey and the crew knew Harry and Carlton's plan and turned the con on them.
• Lucy Britford, (aka "Inspector Lucy Bitchface", as Emma called her), played by Indira Varma, a Detective Chief Inspector who was outsmarted by the gang in series 6 episode 1 after an attempt to bring them to justice, reappeared in the series finale in which the gang are blackmailed into a heist. They outsmart the police. However Lucy doesn't actually reappear to the gang; she was just seen via a video message.