If Hustle was on TV today, the first mark would be Boris Johnson
Hustle, the noughties show which saw corrupt bankers get their comeuppance, became a huge hit in the wake of the financial crash. Today’s villains aren’t businessmen but Westminster politicians, says Katharine Swindells
The pilot episode of BBC’s Hustle, aired in 2004, opens on two suited men dining in a rooftop restaurant that overlooks the London skyline. One man puts a £20 tip on the table, but as soon as he leaves, his companion pockets the bank note. The show is less than a minute in, and already you’ve spotted your “mark”.
Hustle, which ran for eight seasons, followed a group of glamorous “grifters” helmed by Adrian Lester’s “Micky Bricks” as they conned London’s corrupt corporate elite. Watching it today, 20 years later, it offers a fascinating insight into the general public’s view of the business and finance world in the runup to, and immediate aftermath of, the financial crash.
The show was a hit from the get go, with the first three episodes averaging 6.2m viewers, a peak audience share of more than 30 per cent. The idea for Hustle came on the back of the success of the 2001 Ocean’s Eleven, Tony Jordan, the show’s creator tells me, and the production company thought there would be an appetite for a con-artist drama set in the UK.
Kudos, who were already having success with their MI5-drama Spooks, came to Jordan not only for his decade of experience writing for Eastenders, but also his time as a market trader (the Only Fools and Horses kind, not the kind that read CityAM) – “I’ve never been sure about whether I should take offence to that,” he says.
From there, Jordan says, the show was born very quickly. The setting is slick, glamorous and corporate, it’s what Jordan calls “sexy London”, all sharp tailored suits and tight pencil skirts. And the archetype of the Hustle villain, or “the mark” was born quickly too.
Whether old money or new, the marks were instantly recognisable from the way they denigrated immigrants and objectified women. Someone who steals a tip from a waiter or pockets dropped change, is someone who, as the team say, “wants something for nothing, so you give him nothing for something.”
“Very early the decision was that the Hustle marks, the people they went after, would be chosen based on how much the public disliked them,” Jordan says. “The Hustle gang basically represented the great British public who felt hopeless against big business, big money and stuff.”
The con artists were hardly Robin Hoods, giving to the poor, mostly they stole from the rich to fund their penthouse apartments and bottles of Moet. But in getting one over on the corrupt businessmen of the City, Jordan, who calls himself an “old socialist” says, they were “fighting on behalf of the Great British public.”
And then the crash happened, and a show which had already prided itself on being timely suddenly seemed to capture the zeitgeist. Jordan says he felt he had “more responsibility than ever” to let the corrupt bankers have it, and he did that through his characters.
In the premiere of season five, aired in January 2009, Micky Bricks says: “recessions only seem to affect ordinary people, as for the rich, same old same old. They just keep getting richer.”
“He left with a pension of half a million while half the people that worked for him lost his jobs,” the gang says as they plan to target a former CEO of a bailed out bank. They take vengeance for the MP expenses scandal too, when they turn their attention to a bribe-taking Labour MP, citing vengeance.
“We went after the people that the audience enjoyed watching get their comeuppance,” Jordan says. “It was entertainment, but I think at its heart, it was absolutely about representing the country.”
But today there seems to have been a shift. The ultra-wealthy are still popular targets of satire – White Lotus and Succession have been among the most lauded shows of the last few years. But in these, the rich are the leads of the story, not the pantomime villains that made Hustle so popular.
Jordan says that’s because these days, public enemy number one isn’t bankers and bosses, it’s politicians. “If Hustle was on now, 100 per cent my first mark would be Boris Johnson,” he says. “Because don’t forget, I’m representing the people that have been wronged.”
For the corruption and greed that makes someone the perfect target, he says, look to those who run the country: “We’re living in the world of the Hustle mark.”
Katharine Swindells is a journalist covering housing, business and consumer affairs