Thrilling female-led crime caper Frauds provides her and Suranne Jones with properly meaty roles
A banged-up car drives across a dry, dusty plane, a jaunty tune blaring and a hula girl wobbling on the dashboard. The opening shot of Frauds, ITV’s latest crime caper, isn’t quite a shot-by-shot Thelma and Louise recreation, but the reference is clear.
Like the 1991 drama, Frauds follows two friends – Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker – drawn into a life of crime. Rural Spain is the setting this time, providing a similar feeling of desolation, and a nod to the Western genre that plays out in a washed-out colour palette, sweeping shots and twanging guitars.
But Frauds is no pastiche. Sure, it’s another female-led drama big on both gasps and laughs, but it’s also both campy and genuinely shocking.
For those who still see Sunday night ITV dramas as tame compared with their BBC counterparts, Frauds is a far less conventional show than expected. You can thank Jones, who co-created the six-part series with Maryland collaborator Anne-Marie O’Connor. It proves once again that this duo know how to create nuanced, meaty roles for women, ones that really allow the actors to push themselves.
The opening episode plays out as a cat-and-mouse game, where it’s never quite clear which friend is in the driving seat. In that opening shot, however, Whittaker’s Sam is the one at the car’s helm. Up she pulls to a prison building, harsh against the desolate landscape, and out saunters Bert (Jones), speaking in Spanish and blowing the guards a kiss.
It’s hard to talk about Frauds and not mention Jones’s appearance. With her bleached crop haircut and chest tattoo, Bert is worlds away from the tough-but-poised professionals the actor is known for portraying. This whole look could be unconvincing… and yet a swagger to her performance makes it believable.
Bert, we learn on the drive home, has been in prison in Spain for 10 years, while Sam has laid low nearby but not visited. Through flashback glimpses (featuring some rather unconvincing wigs), it is revealed that the pair were criminal co-conspirators, but Sam got off scot free while Bert went down. Guilt flashes across Sam’s face as she drives Bert home: for her friend taking the fall, for their lack of contact in the decade since.
The reason for this “compassionate release” is another twist in the plot: Bert’s recent cancer diagnosis. She’s glib about the whole thing despite having mere months to live, joking that she “can’t die of Legionnaires disease when I’ve pencilled in the Big C” at the sight of Sam’s janky stand-up swimming pool and collapsing home.
Yet a vulnerability to Jones’s performance peeks out beneath the bravado. Bert has a deep desire to be independent and make the most of her final months; within hours of her return, she’s led Sam astray to do “a little break and enter, to get the blood pumping”, and stolen a historic item in the process.
If Bert is a Catherine wheel, Sam is a spluttering sparkler, initially programmed to huff at her friend and do little more. Yet as she spends more time with Bert, the pair squabbling like siblings, you can see her flame reigniting. We all know that Jones is one of our nation’s most eminent actors; Whittaker’s talent has often felt wasted since her days on Doctor Who, but here she really comes into her own.
The episode’s stand-out set piece takes place within the bullring, where Sam and Bert verbally and physically attack one another. Bert goads Sam into charging at her like a bull, the reds and blues of their clothes aligning with the vibrant backdrop and making for a visually striking scene.
It’s a bold opening episode, a tone-setting exercise hinting at thrilling things to come. With Bert secretly getting in contact with her former contacts behind Sam’s back, the promise of one last crime is an exciting one – for her and for us.
