This is the sort of thing that would normally wind up on my Tumblr, but it’s a tad hard to do two images without a bit of clever HTML programming.
   Whomever did the casting for Hustle was very clever with the final episode of the season. To play Robert Vaughn’s old flame, actress Hannah Gordon was cast as Susan. The idea: Susan had left Vaughn’s Albert Stroller character 30 years ago, tired of his grifting, and later found out she was pregnant to him. Their daughter wanted to meet her biological father, and eventually, mother and daughter depart the UK to head back to the US. Stroller misses them both.
   There was a very familiar feel to this and it didn’t take me long to work it out. Gordon has played opposite Vaughn before, as his ex-wife, in Gerry Anderson’s The Protectors. In ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, she and their son depart the UK for the US, and Harry Rule—Vaughn’s character in that series—does not see them off properly.
   It’s us oldies—or at least those of us in middle age who saw the earlier show (on a re-run, I might quickly add)—who might make the connection. Here are the shots, nearly 40 years apart, of Gordon and Vaughn playing couples:


   I realize this isn’t the first time we have seen two actors playing opposite each other romantically—Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles come to mind—but this might be one of the longer gaps. I couldn’t find any news on this from the BBC, so I imagine the casting choice was one for the anoraks.