Frauds Review: Suranne Jones Delivers Her Finest Performance in A Masterful Con Artist Series

How would you respond if your most reckless companion from your teenage years reappeared? What if you were dying of cancer and had nothing to lose? What if you were plagued by remorse for getting your friend imprisoned 10 years ago? Suppose you were the one she landed in the clink and you were only being released to succumb to illness in her care? If you used to be a nearly unbeatable pair of scam artists who still had a stash of disguises left over from your glory days and a deep desire for one last thrill?

These questions and beyond are the questions that Frauds, an original series featuring Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker, presents to viewers on a wild, thrilling six-part ride that follows two female fraudsters bent on pulling off one last job. Echoing an earlier work, Jones co-created this with her collaborator, and it has all the same strengths. Much like the mystery-thriller formula served as a backdrop to emotional conflicts gradually unveiled, here the grand heist the protagonist Roberta (Bert) has meticulously arranged while incarcerated after learning her prognosis is the vehicle for a deep dive into companionship, deceit, and affection in every variation.

Bert is placed under the supervision of Sam (Whittaker), who resides close by in the Andalucían hills. Guilt stopped her from ever visiting Bert, but she has stayed close and avoided scams without her – “Bit crass with you in prison for a job I botched.” And to prepare for Bert’s, if brief, life on the outside, she has bought her plenty of new underwear, because there are many ways for female friends to show repentance and a classic example is the acquisition of “a big lady-bra” following ten years of underwire-free prison-issue rubbish.

Sam aims to continue leading her quiet life and look after Bert till the end. Bert has other ideas. And if your most impulsive companion devises alternative schemes – well, those tend to be the ones you follow. Their old dynamic slowly resurfaces and her strategies are already in motion by the time she lays out the full blueprint for the heist. This show experiments with chronology – producing engagement rather than confusion – to give us the set-pieces first and then the explanations. So we observe the duo stealing gems and timepieces off wealthy guests’ wrists at a memorial service – 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 transform into vibrant outfits as they stride out and down the chapel stairs, awash with adrenaline and assets.

They need the assets to finance the operation. This entails hiring a document expert (with, unbeknown to them, a gambling problem that is due to attract unwanted attention) in the guise of magician’s assistant Jackie (Elizabeth Berrington), who possesses the necessary skills to help them remove and replace the intended artwork (a famous surrealist piece at a major museum). They also enlist art enthusiast Celine (Kate Fleetwood), who focuses on works by artists depicting female subjects. She is equally merciless as all the criminals their accomplice and the funeral theft are drawing towards them, including – most dangerously – their old boss Miss Take (Talisa Garcia), a modern-day Fagin who had them running scams for her from their teens. She did not take well to their declaration of independence as self-reliant tricksters 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 overlook obvious implausibilities – alongside a captivatingly detailed portrait of a bond that is possibly as toxic as Bert’s cancer but just as impossible to uproot. Jones gives perhaps her finest and multifaceted portrayal yet, as the damaged, resentful Bert with her lifetime pursuit of excitement to distract from her internal anguish that is unrelated to metastasising cells. Whittaker supports her, doing brilliant work in a slightly less interesting part, and alongside the creative team they create a incredibly chic, deeply moving and highly insightful work of art that is feminist to its bones without preaching and in every way a triumph. More again, soon, please.