(From left) Marc Warren, Robert Wagner, Jaime Murray, Robert Vaughn and Robert Glenister star in 'Hustle', airing Wednesday night at 10 p.m. on AMC.

Robert Vaughn has known Robert Wagner for 50 years, ever since Wagner's future wife, Natalie Wood, introduced them in the mid-1950s. After Wagner and Wood were married, Vaughn used to see them in various places around Beverly Hills, California, Wagner and Vaughn also know many of the same people in the entertainment industry.

But in all that time, these two TV legends have never done a scene together - until now.

In the fourth-season premiere of the British con-artist series Hustle, which launches Wednesday, April 18, on AMC, Wagner plays a wealthy Texan with a fascination for movie memorabilia who becomes the latest target of the show's gang of con artists (a nice irony, since Wagner played an ex-con artist in Switch).

Starring as the con team are Vaughn (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) as slick Albert Stroller, the 'roper'; Robert Glenister as Ash Morgan, the 'fixer'; Marc Warren as Danny Blue, the 'wild card'; and Jaime Murray as the beautiful Stacie Monroe, the 'lure'.

Season premiere

Also joining the cast is British rapper and actor Ashley Walters as new character Billy Bond.

On the day before Thanksgiving, 2006 (also Vaughn's birthday), the season premiere episode - the first two seasons of the show are currently available on DVD from BBC Video - is in production outside the Beverly Hills Public Works Department, which is standing in for the headquarters of the Hollywood Sign Commission (three guesses what the team is trying to sell Wagner's character).

It's a further irony that, after half a century of running into each other around Beverly Hills, that Vaughn had to go all the way to London to get a role in a TV series that reunited him with Wagner ... in Beverly Hills.

"That's it," Vaughn says.

"Exactly. You summed it up. Golly, that's a long trip to have a job with an old friend. We've been talking up a storm, 'Did you hear ... is hestill around ... oh, no, he's dead,' all of that."

Wonderful character

"Robert's so wonderful in this character," Wagner says, "and is the glue that keeps it all together. I enjoy working with him very much. We've known each other for a long time. We both started about the same time."

"Met just after the flood," quips Vaughn.

On this day, Wagner has a mustache and is decked out in Western wear.

"I've made a lot of money," he says of his character, "and I'm putting it all into Hollywood memorabilia. I'm building the largest museum in the world anywhere, so when they approach me on the possibility (of buying something), and Danny has the inventiveness to say the Hollywood sign, I'm very interested.

"I like this show very much, the content. It's very well written; it's very well acted. I like very much the way that they go about it. I've done this stuff in It Takes a Thief and Switch and Hart to Hart. "

Vaughn, meanwhile, has left messages for his old Man From U.N.C.L.E. co-star David McCallum, who currently stars on CBS' hit drama NCIS (if anyone's interested, Vaughn says he'd love to do a guest shot on that show), because the two normally catch up on their respective birthdays.

Both have been strongly associated with U.N.C.L.E. since it premiered in the mid-1960s, but now McCallum has garnered a new group of fans who know him only as pathologist Dr. Donald 'Ducky' Mallard on NCIS.

Told that people now call McCallum 'Ducky' instead of his U.N.C.L.E. character name, Illya Kuryakin, Vaughn says that now he gets called something other than Napoleon Solo.

American-produced shows

"That's what's happening to me in both London and New York," he says. "Cabdrivers in London do an interesting thing that started this spring. I take out my money and hand them a five-pound note. They take it, fold it up and say, 'Is this any good, mate?' I knew what they meant. It's happened once in New York, too.

"I'm new all over again."

While he says that filming Hustle isn't that different from American-produced shows, Vaughn admits to some problems with his co-stars.

"They can do everything," he says. They can do accents and impressions. Robert does the classic ones like (James) Cagney. He works them into every show. And they can dance. And they can sing. I hate them all. They're so talented. I can do nothing but act."

Natty suit

A few minutes later, Glenister walks by in a natty suit.

"I clean up very well," he says.

"You put a frock on him," Vaughn quips, "you can take him anywhere."

"I think Marc looks better in frocks," Glenister says.

"Yes," Vaughn says. "He's in drag today." Then, to the passing Warren, he says, "When are you putting the dress on?"

"I put the dress on in a couple of hours," Warren says.

"I'm playing an elderly man," Vaughn explains, "with him in a dress."

Asked what it's like working with Vaughn, Glenister says, "It's been one of the highlights of my bloody life working with Vaughn. It has. It's been fantastic. He's made the job, I think, for all of us. To have Robert here, it's been fantastic.

"I don't think we'd have been the same show without him. It's something that you bring to it."

One thing Vaughn brings is a particular skill at exposition. If something needs explaining, it's often Albie who does it.

"Somebody's got to do it," Vaughn says, "and I guess I'm somebody. Robert does it as well."

"I do," Glenister says, "and it's bloody difficult to learn."

"You've basically got a long monologue," Vaughn says, "and every 12 lines, somebody says, 'Go on' or 'Yes.' "

- Kate O'Hare, Zap2it