A bent cop, a nasty hotel critic, and a cocaine set-up made for the perfect combination in the latest installment of the final series of Hustle, raising the stakes for everyone.

Sid Fisk, a notoriously crooked detective, is paid £20,000 to achieve the impossible – bring down Mickey Bricks. Quickly catching wind of the teams’ latest con (a false inheritance scam), Fisk hatches a plan catch the intrepid leader by blackmailing Sean’s ex into spying for him and having Emma set up as a drug dealer.

Needless to say, his plan backfires when it is revealed, in typical Hustle style, that Fisk’s superior had arranged the whole thing with the hustlers in order to ‘clean house’.

We’ll admit, when we first read the synopsis for this episode our hearts sank a little. Here we are, midway through the final (and incredibly impressive) series and they give us a story that we’ve all seen before, several times on Hustle. Sure the characters and scenario are different, but the premise of Bad Cop Goes After ‘Good’ Criminals has been played countless times.

That being said, the reason we watch and love Hustle is because of the larger than life solutions they achieve. We enjoy trying to work out how they’re going to pull off the impossible; these types of episode portray that the best, when the team is pitted against a seemingly unbeatable foe.

Though this episode wasn’t Series 8’s finest, it was nowhere near the worst thing on TV, and with only three episodes of Hustle remaining, we can’t help but wonder what’s coming next.

Aired at 9pm on Friday 27th January 2012 on BBC One.

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