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What could you do if that wildest companion from your teenage years reappeared? What if you were dying of cancer and felt completely unburdened? Consider if you were plagued by remorse for getting your friend imprisoned a decade back? Suppose you were the one she got sent to prison and your release was granted to die of cancer in her custody? If you used to be a nearly unbeatable pair of con artists who still had a stash of disguises from your prime and a longing to feel some excitement again?

These questions and beyond are the questions that Frauds, a new drama featuring Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker, flings at us on a exhilarating, intense season-long journey that traces two female fraudsters bent on pulling off one last job. Echoing an earlier work, Jones developed this series with a writing partner, and it retains similar qualities. Much like a suspense-driven structure was used as background to emotional conflicts gradually unveiled, here the elaborate theft Jones’ character Roberta (Bert) has meticulously arranged while incarcerated after learning her prognosis is the vehicle for an exploration of companionship, deceit, and affection in every variation.

Bert is placed under the supervision of Sam (Whittaker), who resides close by in the Andalucían hills. Remorse prevented her from seeing Bert during her sentence, but she has stayed close and avoided scams without her – “Bit crass with you in prison for a job I messed up.” And for her new, albeit short, life on the outside, she has bought her plenty of new underwear, because various methods exist for women companions to show repentance and a classic example is the acquisition of “a big lady-bra” following ten years of uncomfortable institutional clothing.

Sam aims to continue maintaining her peaceful existence and look after Bert till the end. Bert has other ideas. And when your daftest friend devises alternative schemes – well, those tend to be the ones you follow. Their old dynamic slowly resurfaces and her strategies are underway by the time she reveals the complete plan for the heist. This show experiments with chronology – producing engagement rather than confusion – to present key scenes initially and then the explanations. So we watch the pair slipping jewellery and watches off wealthy guests’ wrists at a funeral – and acquiring a gilded religious artifact because what’s to stop you if you could? – before removing their hairpieces and turning their mourning clothes inside out to become colourful suits as they stride out and down the church steps, awash with adrenaline and loot.

They need the assets to finance the operation. This entails hiring a document expert (with, unknown to the pair, a gambling problem that is likely to draw unwanted attention) in the guise of magician’s assistant Jackie (Elizabeth Berrington), who possesses the necessary skills to help them remove and replace the target painting (a famous surrealist piece at a major museum). Additionally, they recruit art enthusiast Celine (Kate Fleetwood), who focuses on works by male artists exploiting women. She is as ruthless as all the criminals the forger and their funeral robbery are drawing towards them, including – most perilously of all – their old boss Miss Take (Talisa Garcia), a contemporary crime lord who employed them in frauds for her since their youth. She reacted poorly to their declaration of independence as self-reliant tricksters so there’s ground to make up there.

Unexpected developments are layered between deepening revelations about Bert and Sam’s history, so you get all the satisfactions of a Thomas Crown Affair-ish caper – carried out with immense energy and praiseworthy readiness to skate over rampant absurdities – plus a captivatingly detailed portrait of a bond that is potentially as harmful as Bert’s cancer but just as impossible to uproot. Jones delivers arguably her best and most complex performance yet, as the wounded, bitter Bert with her lifetime pursuit of excitement to distract from her internal anguish that has nothing to do with her medical condition. Whittaker supports her, delivering excellent acting in a slightly less interesting part, and alongside the creative team they craft a fantastically stylish, deeply moving and highly insightful piece of entertainment that is inherently empowering without preaching and in every way a triumph. Eagerly awaiting future installments.