Trivia / Hustle

• Ability over Appearance: The casters had intended for Michael Stone to be an older white Clooney-esque character, like the rest of the main cast, but Adrian Lester's performance impressed them.
• Darkhorse Casting: Adrian Lester had plenty of film and stage credits, but he was an unknown face in television, having had less than two hours' broadcast screen time prior to the first season.
• Dawson Casting: Mickey is meant to be the seasoned professional, while Danny is the young rookie. In reality, Marc Warren is a year older than Adrian Lester.
• Duelling Works: With US show Leverage, the Transatlantic Equivalent. The UK never really aired the original run of Leverage on anything but premium subscriptions like Sky, leading it to an Unknown Rival situation, and thus, no Fandom Rivalry ever really took place. It would take until Prime Video and Freevee for Brits to finally get a chance to compare the two. That said, they are structurally similar in terms of writing and themes (Leverage is more a comedy, Hustle is more a Dramedy), while both crews also have near-identical motivations - getting back at the rich and powerful by conning them because of their misdeeds, often in an ironic way, and very occasionally because they wronged someone close to the crew.
• Directed by Cast Member: Adrian Lester directed "Picasso Finger Painting", a final series episode (which resulted in Mickey spending much of the episode locked in a car boot).
• Fake American: One episode had what may be a triple subversion: they think JW3 is American. He's played by American actor Richard Chamberlain. Then it turns out the character is British, and was a Fake American all along. Then it turns out that he really is American, and was a Fake Brit for a bit.
• Fake Brit: Parodied - one episode has Albert convinced he can do accents, much to the others' horror.
• No Export for You: North America hasn't seen a DVD release of the series since Season 4.
• Star-Making Role: For Louise Mardenborough in season 7, with her faux-American accent (claiming to be from Minnesota).
• What Could Have Been:
  • Clive Owen turned down the role of Mickey.
  • Season 6 looked to change up the formula a bit by introducing Indira Varma as Mickey's Evil Counterpart (or Good Counterpart, depending on how you looked at it) Lucy Britford - a classy, intelligent DCI and master planner determined to bring Mickey down. Unfortunately, Varma's real-life pregnancy forced this to be curtailed, with her only appearing in a pre-recorded message in episode 6 and her role being taken by a Suspiciously Similar Substitute played by Anna Madeley.

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