The couple can’t miss them, a bearded old man and a small boy eating street food, then curling up under cardboard when night falls just on the other side of the gate that guards the couple’s middle class bungalow.

They’re childless, we can see, and while the charity — food, and then shelter — they extend to Grandpa Lolo and “The Kid” is certainly borne of compassion, there might be something else they can do to “help” this tiny homeless Filipino family on their doorstep.

Maybe they can “adopt” the boy? Just a thought.

Teary-eyed Lolo (Joel Torre) sees the good life they can offer the school age moppet (Euwenn Mikael Aleta) in his care. His grandson will have a chance at a real life, school, a future. He reluctantly accepts over the crying jag The Kid greets this news with. It’s for the best.

But later that night, in pyjamas, drying his tears, the kid stuffs a bag with electronics and valuables, slips out and they’re off. It’s another evening’s perfect con for “Lolo and the Kid.”

Filipino writer-director Benedict Mique (“Monday First Screening”) leans hard on the sentimental in this picareseque street scene. These two are pros — cynical, experienced hustlers, but Torre’s performance as Lolo convinces us, and this childless couple, that gay couple, that rich former street urchin who made good, that he’s a “grandpa” who can see each offer (cash included) would almost certainly be the best thing for this child who turns out to NOT be his grandson.

But every time, the kid does his part, doors are unlocked, loot is grabbed, their long-suffering fence (David Minemoto) is cheated when they sell laptops and the like to fuel their amusement park, binge-eating, karaoke bar and hotel room daily routine as scam artists.

Well, almost every time.

There’s teaching going on, as Lolo instructs that the world is divided into “those who cheat and those who get cheated (in Filipino and English).” Who needs school? “Everything you’d learn in school you can learn on the streets!”

Mique may set us up nicely for that first fake-out. But as he pulls comic and satiric punches with most of these heists, we know he sees “maudlin” as the only logical direction to take this thing.

The victims aren’t Chaplinesque objects of scorn or fun as haste-to-adopt-or-not, they each seem to have the boy’s best intentions at heart.

The funniest exchanges are with “Fatty” the stolen goods-buying pawner/”fence.” But the song the 50something and little boy (he looks 8 or 9) duet to at the karaoke bar is worth a giggle, if you remember “Kenny Rogers’ Greatest Hits.” And the kid trying to sneak a sip of the beer Lolo indulges in earns a comical lecture that jabs Aussie and New Zealand tourists.

Booze now, and “what’s next? Drugs? Sex? RUGBY?”

Torre’s a sturdy presence holding the story together, but the lack of surprises and fear of getting too “edgy” undo a promising portrait of street life among the “cheaters” who start to feel the “cheated” may have something to offer beyond what they can steal from them.

Rating: TV-MA, theft, an accident, profanity

Cast: Joel Torre, Euwenn Mikael Aleta, David Minemoto and Iza Calzado

Credits: Scripted and directed by Benedict Mique. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:37