Perfect set-up
Simon Hoggart
Two very popular drama series came back this week. Hustle (BBC1, Tuesday) is entirely formulaic, and none the worse for that. In each episode the villains are the heroes, and their victims are the villains. Just in case we might have sympathy with the grifters’ marks, we are told something truly yucky about them. It is rarely subtle. In the first episode of the first series, the mark was watched by Robert Vaughn as he stole a waitress’s tip. In the first episode of this second series, we learned that the victim ran over an old lady’s cat so that she would have no reason to avoid selling her house. He might as well have the words ‘I am seriously evil’ tattooed on his forehead.
And, of course, the goody-baddies are so delicious. There is an entire generation (mine) who would have sawn off our arms at the elbow to be as suave, smooth and sophisticated as Robert Vaughn when he played Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He added sinister to this heady mixture when he played the crooked senator in Bullitt. Now he hits the triple-S again as Stroller, conveying as much by a raised eyebrow as some actors manage with a 30second rant.
The only cast member to challenge this dazzling middle-aged style is Adrian Lester, as the gang’s leader. A black Shakespearean actor, impeccably dressed, playing a criminal mastermind! How cool can that be? Then there is Danny Blue, played by Marc Warren, a tough, adroit little schemer with a baby face, so you’re never quite sure whether he’s going to rob you blind or burst into tears. Jaime Murray as Stacie Monroe is so gorgeous it’s hard to concentrate on her part in the gang’s latest wheeze, though I’m sure it’s most important, and the final member, Ash Morgan — well, Robert Glenister is a very fine actor, though he is not exactly overstretched here.
The plot is always the same. The wicked mark has been observed glueing a baby’s head to the wall, or whatever. The gang devise a cunning scheme to play on his greed (‘You can’t cheat an honest man’ is one of their catchphrases, lobbed in now and again in case any of the audience might actually disapprove of con artists). At some point they will have to convert a building to look like the headquarters of a vast international finance house, or an art gallery, or something glamorous — this task is always completed to perfection round about the moment the mark is about to walk in the door. You know some of the impressive diplomas must have been Blu-tacked to the wall, but they never drop. When the mark gets suspicious, it doesn’t matter because the gang has an adroit fall-back scheme. This week Ash apparently shot at a rat; in fact he was sprinkling gold dust on a waste lot to convince the mark that east London was the new Klondyke. Believe that? Of course you don’t. But it works.
Since they invariably score an immense amount of money, it’s puzzling what the gang does with it. Obviously thousands a day must go on the improbably luxurious hotel room where they hatch their scams. Perhaps that’s it: each job earns enough for them to plan the next job in the style to which they’ve become accustomed. None of this matters. Style, pace and ludicrous plotting are all that count. As the punchline of the old joke says: ‘It’s shit — but perfectly cooked shit.’ Footballers’ Wives (ITV, Thursday) is back for a fourth series. It has the whiff of formaldehyde about it. Actually I’ve thought that for the last two series, but I’ve always been wrong. It only just got recommisioned after the first outing, since the viewers, largely middle class, were not numerous. Since then the audience has gone downmarket but has increased, so the show looks like a pretty permanent fixture.
And, yet, there does seem to be a sort of curse about it. Most of the interesting characters have been written out. Where is Chardonnay, she of the flaming breasts in series one? And the odious Jason? Why has Kyle gone to Australia, and what happened to that pretty wife of his, the one with the pouched squirrel cheeks? Only Tanya, played by Zoe Tucker, and Jackie — Gillian Taylforth — remain behind, and it’s hard to get past the notion that they have nowhere else to go. Mind you, Julie Legrand as Nurse Dunkley, is quite evil enough to be one of the marks in Hustle. She acts most of the other ingénues off the screen.
The plots get wilder, with rape, death, gay sex and baby-swapping all crammed into the first 90 minutes. To misquote the old gag: ‘It’s shit, and awfully overcooked shit.’
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