Stealing from the rich

“Hustle” is back tonight for a fourth six-episode series of light-hearted larceny -- such a cheery, melodious word, “larceny.” Tracing the adventures of a lovable gang of London-based con artists, this AMC/BBC co-production is not a show to look too closely at, built as it is on a scaffolding of improbability and moral disingenuousness. But if you do not ask too much of it, it will not ask too much of you, and so a happy agreement may be reached.

From fairy tales onward, we like stories in which brains trump brawn, and we are ready for a bit of deviltry as long as nobody (nobody we like) gets hurt. The cat burglar is friendlier than the armed robber, the art thief sexier than the vandal.

It is necessary for our sense of fair play that the crimes these heroes commit be both tortuously difficult and that the victims not be the sort of people who in the real world are most often victims, and these are the rules by which “Hustle” (AMC, tonight at 10 p.m.) scrupulously plays. The marks are always obscenely rich and utterly bad, so that by relieving them of large sums of money, these grifters are in effect only delivering just desserts, doing good work, like avenging angels. In the season opener -- involving a trip to Los Angeles, like when the Brady Bunch went to Hawaii -- Robert Wagner, of “It Takes a Thief” and “Hart to Hart” TV fame, plays a retired Texas industrialist tricked into buying the Hollywood sign; we hear that he is “not only mean but also corrupt,” up to his neck in bribery and blackmail. This takes the sting out of the sting. (It is nice to see Wagner again, and he admirably does not oversell the accent.)

From the Saul Bass-meets-Shag opening titles to the split-screen effects and saturated colors, “Hustle” is painted from toes to crown in the retro-modern cocktail-aesthetic that was all the rage a few years back. It’s most obvious antecedent is Steven Soderbergh’s remake of “Ocean’s Eleven” -- the season closer will take place in Las Vegas, in fact -- but while it may be no less a piece of hooey than that film, it is the more likable for being less expensive and not so obviously pleased with itself. But its true close cousins come from the small-screen: “Mission: Impossible” (a con-artist show under its thin veneer of geopolitical righteousness), “The A-Team” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” At bottom it’s about the pleasures of running with a gang, and a particularly nice feature of this particular gang is that it is cross-generational, a half-century spread ranging from new kid on the block Billy (played by Ashley Waters, 24) to old pro Albert (erstwhile Man From U.N.C.L.E. Robert Vaughn, 74).

The big change this season is the loss of Adrian Lester, who played group leader Mickey, and whose absence is explained by his having gone off to Australia on a very long con. Lester, whose Mickey was relatively dark and a little wounded, gave the show a certain weight -- gravitas is probably too strong a word -- and in his absence it becomes more thoroughly comic. Vaughn’s Albert now becomes the series’ serious center, while laddish Danny, played by Marc Warren, ascends to leader pro tem. (“I can be big -- I am special, too, you know.) Ash (Robert Glenister) and Stacie (Jaime Murray) stay where they are, “the fixer” and “the lure.” (In spite of Murray’s strengths, the show is regretfully invested in old notions of Women as Decoration.)

The finely plotted twists and turns of the various cons notwithstanding, every episode is essentially the same. (Plan A fails, Plan B hastily improvised, all comes right in the 11th hour, or rather, the 50th minute.) But as much can be said of “House” or “Law & Order,” and almost everything else on television. (That is why people watch it.) Although the medium does require periodic infusions of something that resembles novelty, in between these points it goes along in a mostly predictable way, even when it claims to do otherwise: You don’t know who will win “American Idol” but you have a good idea of what the experience will be.

This is like that, except that you also know who’ll win.

robert.lloyd@latimes.com