It sounds like an Ocean’s film, but this playful heist tale is so much more

Frauds ★★★★

Too many actors today try to be a brand, but Suranne Jones has the right idea: she wants to be a studio. The English actress has enjoyed a terrific run of television hits, whether commercial or critical, this last decade with starring roles in the likes of Doctor Foster, Gentleman Jack and Vigil, but she has also begun making shows that add a genuinely illuminating depth to her body of work.

Like 2023’s Maryland, a hidden-life mystery on BritBox that explored the frayed connection between two sisters, Frauds was created by Jones and Anne-Marie O’Connor. It’s an updated heist tale, a treatise on female friendship, a tale of deception in which the goals keep shifting, and an impertinent comedy. I could list more elements, but that would spoil the playful waywardness of this six-part series.

Directed with vigour by Giulia Gandini, Frauds gender-flips the male iconography of crime thrillers. When Martha “Sam” Samuels (Jodie Whittaker) pulls up in the dusty car park of a Spanish prison, it’s Roberta ‘Bert’ Mancini (Jones) who walks out the front gate, complete with a laconic quip for her jailers. The two are old friends and former criminal colleagues – Bert has done a 10-year stretch for a failed job she pulled with Sam. The two size each other up like gunfighters, then hug like best friends.

Bert has been released to the custody of Sam, who has kept her nose clean, because Bert has a terminal illness (“months not years”, she drily notes). But reminiscing and palliative care are not on the agenda. Bert has one last job planned, one that would earn everyone “f--- off money”, and she’s keen to involve Sam, whether it requires casual guilting or the promise of excitement.

Is a close friendship based on total honesty or the ability to ignore difficult truths? The bond between Bert and Sam, who are fearless on the job together but sometimes – especially in Sam’s case – suspicious of each other’s intentions, is the foundation of the show. “It’s always too risky with the two of you,” notes Jackie Diamond (Elizabeth Berrington), one of their professional contacts and reluctant recruits, and that equally applies to the duo’s personal dynamic.

Bert’s big target is in a posh Madrid museum, so right away you have the classic heist incitement, just like The Thomas Crown Affair. But the threads that are being woven into something new here have a broader provenance. Think David Mamet’s House of Games, not just the Ocean’s movies. But all the cool logistics come with menace and suspicion. There’s a psychological layer also at work, rife with abandonment issues and latent anger.

Jones and Whittaker – in her sun’s-out-guns-out singlet era – are terrific as women who know everything about each other and are not averse to manipulation. They’ll twist a situation to get what they believe they want, or perhaps what the other deserves. There are setbacks and side missions, particularly when one team member brings a serious debt with British gangsters, but the complex relationship between the two is always crucial.

The series absolutely knows how to show off, right down to Bert and Sam posing as nuns for a spot of pickpocketing before triumphantly flinging off their habits in slow motion, but there are scams within scams at work in Frauds. Don’t confuse it for a mere spot of fun.

Frauds premieres 8.50pm on Sunday, March 15 on the ABC and iview.

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