🔗 Share this article

What would you respond if your most reckless companion from your teenage years reappeared? Imagine if you were battling a terminal illness and felt completely unburdened? Consider if you felt guilty for getting your friend imprisoned 10 years ago? Suppose you were the one she got sent to prison and you were only being released to die of cancer in her care? If you used to be a almost unstoppable pair of con artists who still had a stash of disguises from your prime and a deep desire for one last thrill?

All this and more form the core of Frauds, a new drama starring Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker, flings at us on a exhilarating, intense six-part ride that follows two conwomen bent on pulling off one last job. Similar to an earlier work, Jones developed this series with her collaborator, and it has all the same strengths. Much like a suspense-driven structure served as a backdrop to the psychodramas gradually unveiled, here the grand heist Jones’ character Roberta (Bert) has meticulously arranged while incarcerated since her diagnosis is a means to explore an exploration of friendship, betrayal and love in every variation.

Bert is placed under the supervision of Sam (Whittaker), who lives nearby in the Spanish countryside. Remorse prevented her from seeing Bert during her sentence, but she remained nearby and avoided scams without her – “Bit crass with you in prison for a job I messed up.” And for her new, if brief, freedom, she has purchased numerous undergarments, because there are many ways for female friends to offer contrition and one is the purchase of “a big lady-bra” following ten years of uncomfortable institutional clothing.

Sam aims to continue leading her quiet life and look after Bert till the end. Bert possesses different plans. And if your most impulsive companion devises alternative schemes – well, those tend to be the ones you follow. Their former relationship slowly resurfaces and her strategies are underway by the time she reveals the complete plan for the robbery. This show plays around with the timeline – to good rather than eye-rolling effect – to give us the set-pieces first and then the explanations. So we watch the pair slipping jewellery and watches from affluent attendees at a funeral – and bagging a golden crown of thorns because why wouldn’t you if you could? – before removing their hairpieces and reversing their funeral attire to become colourful suits as they stride out and down the chapel stairs, awash with adrenaline and assets.

They need the assets to fund the plan. This entails recruiting a forger (with, unknown to the pair, a betting addiction that is due to attract unwanted attention) in the form of illusionist’s aide Jackie (Elizabeth Berrington), who has the technical know-how to assist in swapping the target painting (a renowned Dali painting at a major museum). Additionally, they recruit art enthusiast Celine (Kate Fleetwood), who focuses on works by artists depicting female subjects. She is as ruthless as all the criminals their accomplice and the funeral theft are drawing towards them, including – most dangerously – their former leader Miss Take (Talisa Garcia), a modern-day Fagin who employed them in frauds for her since their youth. She did not take well to the pair’s assertion of themselves as independent conwomen so there’s ground to make up in that area.

Plot twists are layered between progressively uncovered truths about Bert and Sam’s history, so you get all the satisfactions of a sophisticated heist tale – carried out with immense energy and admirable willingness to skate over rampant absurdities – plus a captivatingly detailed portrait of a friendship that is potentially as harmful as her illness but equally difficult to eradicate. Jones delivers arguably her best and most complex performance yet, as the damaged, resentful Bert with her endless quest for thrills to distract from her internal anguish that has nothing to do with metastasising cells. Whittaker stands with her, doing brilliant work in a somewhat less flashy role, and alongside the creative team they create a incredibly chic, emotionally rich and highly insightful work of art that is feminist to its bones devoid of lecturing and in every way a triumph. Eagerly awaiting future installments.