Hustle

9:20pm – Saturday, July 21 on ABC1

When Emma (Kelly Adams) finds out that her ex-boyfriend Joe Ryan (Joe Armstrong) is facing eviction, the team find themselves travelling to Birmingham to take on Georgina Althorp (Angela Griffin), the owner of an unscrupulous business Dosh4You – a money lending business charging incredibly high interest rates.

Georgina’s a lawyer so she makes sure that her contracts are watertight with lots of fine print and conditions that her unsuspecting clients, often in a state of desperation, don’t read. Joe and his young son are facing eviction by Georgina’s business thanks to a loan he took out. It was only later that he discovered the loan had an interest rate of 4,000%.

The team get down to business and begin to investigate Georgina and her business to see what the weak link might be. She is the perfect mark – greedy, ruthless and aspirational. When they discover that she has changed her name and turned her back on her working class roots, they have their con.

The team set about the ambitious task of selling Georgina a castle and a title to go along with it, but will she bite? It won’t be the first time the team have sold a property that they didn’t own. Meanwhile it seems love is blossoming once more for Emma, and she is given an opportunity that’s hard to refuse. Are they about to lose one of the team for good?

9:20pm – Saturday, July 14 on ABC1

Slick, stylish and smart, the seventh series of Hustle kicks off on ABC1, Saturday 14 July at 9.20pm. Expect more exciting, inventive and sophisticated scams as the team get ready to part the greedy from their hard-earned cash.

Master con man Mickey Bricks (Adrian Lester) returns with his team of talented con artists – expert fixer Ash ‘three socks’ Morgan (Robert Glenister), master roper Albert Stroller (Robert Vaughn) and brother and sister team Sean (Matt Di Angelo) and Emma Kennedy (Kelly Adams).

The team’s first rule is never to con an honest man; and they have a wealth of greedy adversaries lined up for some of their most audacious cons yet.

This time around there’s a cruel modelling agent who scams young girls out of their hard-earned cash, an unscrupulous social climber at the helm of a greedy loan firm, an Iranian hard man nicknamed ‘the Dentist’ and even a notorious grifter busted.

There are also personal scores to settle and while one member of the team fights to save their family name another finds themselves questioning whether the life of a grifter is really for them.

Tough decisions and plenty of fun abound as the team go head to head with some of the meanest, greediest people society has to offer.

9:20pm – Saturday, July 7 on ABC1

Just as the gang is about to close another successful deal, a cruel twist of fate reveals one of the marks to be an undercover police officer. It seems the team might be in a spot of bother. Don’t miss the final episode of Hustle, Saturday 7 July at 9.20pm.

Mickey (Adrian Lester) and the team are arrested and unceremoniously thrown in the slammer. Things look like they have gone from bad to worse when Nigel Chambers (Tom Beard) and the beautiful Jennifer Hughes (Anna Madeley) from MI6 arrive to question Mickey. The pair have a proposition for him and, unfortunately for Mickey, these two don’t play by the book.

Jennifer has an ulterior motive, she is friends with a certain DCI Lucy Britford (Indira Varma) who was conned by the team and has a score to settle. MI6 are willing to offer the team a pardon if they do a little job for them in return. The target is the National Bank of Syria and the heist is the unknown contents of a security box. The reward for the team is their freedom plus as much cash as they can carry from the vault.

With no choice but to agree, Ash (Robert Glenister) sets about trying to find a way in, however the bank has as much security as Fort Knox, which means that Sean (Matt Di Angelo) and Emma (Kelly Adams) are also going to need to find a way in on the inside as well. The team need to go the extra mile to pull this off and it seems that even Mickey can’t charm his way out of this one.

9:30pm – Saturday, June 30 on ABC1

The gang is left in shock as the unthinkable happens – Mickey (Adrian Lester) is conned! Some lowlife rips him off by selling him a useless mobile phone online. According to the age-old laws of grifting, when a grifter is conned he’s guaranteed a run of bad luck.

What will the gang do if Mickey loses his mojo? They head to Eddie’s to drown their sorrows, only to find it heaving with customers. It seems Lady Luck has switched her allegiance, and the team needs to do something to restore the balance.

The hustlers set about researching the company that conned Mickey, leading them to Mervyn Lloyd (Daniel Mays), an outrageously cocky and slimy businessman who would sell his own grandmother to make a fast buck. Mervyn sells the latest mod cons through the internet, but, unlike more reputable retailers, he doesn’t worry if they work or not. Mervyn dreams of working with famous entrepreneurs like Dragons’ Den’s Deborah Meaden, Peter Jones and Duncan Bannatyne but he has none of their integrity or morals.

The gang work on a plan to reel Mervyn in. Mickey is forced to step aside thanks to his rotten luck, so the con-running baton passes to Ash (Robert Glenister). His brief is to convince Mervyn that Albert (Robert Vaughn) is on the verge of creating the next big thing – but what? The team need to hatch a foolproof plan to snare Mervyn in order to get Mickey’s mojo back, otherwise his bad luck may be here to stay.

9:30pm – Saturday, June 23 on ABC1

The gang are just about to close a deal worth fifty thousand pounds; that is, until Sean (Matt Di Angelo) is distracted by someone with whom he has a score to settle. He lets the mark walk off with the money while he pursues the man. The man is none other than Rex Kennedy (Danny Webb), Sean and Emma’s (Kelly Adams) long lost dad.

Sean is determined to get even and wants to lead a con on his dad to get the money he owes in back-dated child support. The gang are dubious but Sean is adamant he wants to go through with it, so they reluctantly agree.

Rex is a property developer, so Sean decides to run a version of the ‘treasure map’ con. Mickey (Adrian Lester) poses as a surveyor interested in buying Rex’s land and while visiting the site they spot Sean, a treasure hunter with a metal detector who finds, and then hides, a jewel-encrusted bracelet in the mud.

When Rex spots this he visits the site later to take the bracelet for himself.

Sean tracks Rex down and spins him a yarn about a group of aristocrats in the war who used his Uncle Lonnie (Albert) (Robert Vaughn) to smuggle valuables to America. Unfortunately the plane was shot down and the jewels were buried with it and he thinks that Rex’s land is where X marks the spot.

But when Sean discovers that his father is actually not the man he thought he would be, he wants out.

But Rex is having none of it. Sean is out of his depth, will he and Emma get to even the score with their father and find the answers they have been looking for?

9:30pm – Saturday, June 16 on ABC1

On tonight’s episode of Hustle, Albert (Robert Vaughan) is in Chinatown to close a deal with Phil and his brother -in-law Charlie (Velibor Topic).

However, Czech Charlie is a notorious hard-man and not one to ever consider conning, so when Phil collapses and dies, Albert decides to cut his losses and leave the con. But Charlie isn’t pulling out. He wants his brother-in-law’s cash by the end of the week, or else… Can the team con half a million to save Albert’s bacon.

First they need a mark, and quick! Fortunately, Sean (Matt Di Angelo) has found Luke Baincross (Simon Day)a wannabe playboy with a huge country mansion. Baincross Hall houses an Indian art collection, including a life-sized gold tiger worth ten million pounds.

Emma (Kelly Adams) is sent in to capture his attention with the hope they can steal the tiger, have Luke fake an insurance claim and pay the team a fee of half a million to get Albert out of trouble.

They manage to convince Luke to lend the tiger to a major museum, which would make it easier for them to steal. The only catch is that the tiger must end up in the gallery and not in the museum’s impenetrable vault, otherwise the team would have no chance of stealing it. With Mickey (Adrian Lester) having no plan B, they may be skating on thin ice.

9:30pm – Saturday, June 9 on ABC1

On tonight’s episode of Hustle, Albert (Robert Vaughan) had decided it’s time for a break so he’s off to Sin City to try his luck at the casinos.

While seeing Albert off at the airport, the team run into ‘Liability’ Finch (Mark Benton), a bumbling, ex-grifter mate of Ash’s (Robert Glenister) from back in the day.

Finch seems to be in a spot of bother with the Head of Customs, a tough nut by the name of Clifford Davis (Nick Sidi). Davis rightly believes that Finch is behind the theft of a valuable Van Gogh. Unfortunately for Finch, when he stole it, things didn’t go quite to plan and the painting is now stuck in a locker at a Brazilian airport.

To make matters worse, the Russian collector who paid Finch to steal the painting has threatened to break his legs if he doesn’t deliver the painting in the next few days. Finch needs the team as help, but Mickey (Adrian Lester) refuses – he may be a great friend, but Finch is a hapless thief and too big a risk.

However, Davis is soon on the crew’s case and blackmails Mickey into helping him recover the painting and charge Finch in the process. Will Mickey help take Finch down to save one of his own team from going to jail?

9:30pm – Saturday, June 2 on ABC1

The popular series, Hustle returns for a sixth series and the gang are back, with more exciting, inventive and sophisticated (if a little bit shady) scams. If you have money to burn…you had better keep an eye on it.

When Mickey (Adrian Lester) meets a beautiful, clever young woman, it all seems to be too good to be true.. and it is. Lucy Britford is an, albeit highly attractive, Detective Inspector, set on getting somewhere in life – the only trouble is that achieving her ambitions rather unfortunately involves catching Mickey and making him answer to all of his past misdemeanours – meaning a long- lasting relationship is quite out of the question. Much to Emma’s (Kelly Adams) relief.

Meanwhile Sean (Matt Di Angelo) and Emma must face up to some long past, but not forgotten, family history, and contemplate the best way to get the perfect revenge – the question is – is it about the money? Factor in Ash’s (Robert Glenister) reunion with ‘Liability Finch’ and the disturbing disappearance of lady luck from their most valuable asset – Mickey and the team have more than enough to keep them, and everyone else, guessing.

In episode one, the series kicks off just as the team are finishing with one genius con where Emma is posing as pop princess Kylie and Albert is out finding and priming the next unsuspecting mark – ex-banker Piggy Richarson who has been hounded by the press after a very public pension scandal. However just as everything starts to fall into place a mysterious woman enquires about Mickey’s whereabouts and throws their plan into disarray.

9:30pm – Friday, August 19 on ABC1

The team need a holiday, but before they can leave, they pull one more con on arrogant upper-class twit, Alfie Baron. They intend to take Alfie in a clever sting for all 4million pounds of his inheritance. It will be their most profitable con ever.

Unbeknown to the team, Alfie is actually a plant. He is part of an elaborate con in which their former mark, Carlton Wood, is planning to take his revenge on Mickey (Adrian Lester). Wood is a corrupt venture capitalist who was previously conned by Mickey for 500,000 pounds and he has gathered together three other aggrieved marks equally determined to get revenge.

Carlton cunningly moves Alfie onto the team’s radar by planting him in one of Albert’s (Robert Vaughn) regular poker games. The team immediately sees Alfie’s potential as a mark and a perfect easy target for Sean’s (Matt Di Angelo) first job as inside man.

With Ash (Robert Glenister) by his side, Sean poses as financier Justin Tyler to sell Alfie the idea that he could double his inheritance if he invests in a dodgy money-laundering scam. The team plans to put down all their savings in their largest convincer ever so Alfie will think he has doubled his initial investment – 1million pounds in cash, with the promise of his whole 4 million pounds inheritance. It’s a risky move and the stakes are high…

But Carlton’s real plan is to walk away with the convincer, and leave the gang with nothing.

Could this be the end for our con artists? Or does a mysterious redhead have the potential to save the day?

9:30pm – Friday, August 12 on ABC1

Caught out while posing as lawyers, the team is placed in an awkward position when they are asked to help save community centre The Pulse, which is under threat of demolition. The centre’s manager Lennie (Roger Griffiths) has been betrayed by ruthless local MP Rhona Christie (Kate Fleetwood), who negotiated the building’s sale in a dirty development deal.

The grifters are quick to spot the potential for a mark in the midst of the questionable goings on.

Ash (Robert Glenister) delves into Christie’s background but can’t uncover how she is profiting from the corrupt deals he is sure she’s conducting. Sean (Matt Di Angelo) is sent into the murky world of politics to gather information, getting a position as Christie’s researcher, while Albert (Robert Vaughn) borrows the identity of billionaire property developer JJ Kayne.

The plan is to entice Christie to de-list a historical building Kayne owns to see how her corruption works. Christie is keen to do business, and the team cleverly extracts money from her. But when she uses a third party to cover her tracks, Mickey (Adrian Lester) realises he needs another facet to the con if they are to get her to incriminate herself and they can save The Pulse.

Everything is going to plan, but Sean is furious when he witnesses Mickey and Emma (Kelly Adams) kissing. Can the team restore harmony and prevent the demolition crew moving in, and will Albert’s mysterious trip to the countryside help?