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What could you do if that wildest friend from your youth reappeared? What if you were battling a terminal illness and felt completely unburdened? What if you were plagued by remorse for landing your friend in the clink 10 years ago? Suppose you were the one she got sent to prison and your release was granted to succumb to illness in her care? What if you had been a almost unstoppable pair of con artists who retained a collection of costumes left over from your glory days and a deep desire for one last thrill?

These questions and beyond are the questions that Frauds, a new drama starring Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker, presents to viewers on a exhilarating, intense season-long journey that traces two female fraudsters bent on executing a final scheme. Echoing a recent project, Jones co-created this with her collaborator, and it has all the same strengths. Just as the mystery-thriller formula served as a backdrop to emotional conflicts slowly revealed, here the elaborate theft Jones’ character Roberta (Bert) has meticulously arranged in prison after learning her prognosis is a means to explore 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 Spanish countryside. Remorse prevented her from ever visiting Bert, but she has stayed close and avoided scams without her – “Rather insensitive with you in prison for a job I botched.” And for her new, albeit short, freedom, she has purchased numerous undergarments, because various methods exist for women companions to offer contrition and a classic example is the purchase of “a big lady-bra” following ten years of underwire-free prison-issue rubbish.

Sam wants to carry on maintaining her peaceful existence and care for Bert until her passing. Bert has other ideas. And when your daftest friend has other ideas – well, those tend to be the ones you follow. Their former relationship gradually reasserts itself and Bert’s plans are already in motion by the time she reveals the complete plan for the robbery. 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 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, filled with excitement and loot.

They require the stolen goods to finance the operation. This involves hiring a document expert (with, unknown to the pair, a betting addiction that is due to attract unneeded scrutiny) in the form of magician’s assistant Jackie (Elizabeth Berrington), who possesses the necessary skills to assist in swapping the target painting (a famous surrealist piece at a major museum). Additionally, they recruit feminist art collector Celine (Kate Fleetwood), who specialises in 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 perilously of all – 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 unresolved issues remain in that area.

Plot twists are interspersed with deepening revelations about Bert and Sam’s history, so you get all the satisfactions of a Thomas Crown Affair-ish caper – executed with no shortage of brio and admirable willingness to overlook obvious implausibilities – alongside a mesmerisingly intricate portrait of a bond that is potentially as harmful as Bert’s cancer but equally difficult to eradicate. Jones gives perhaps her finest and most complex performance yet, as the damaged, resentful Bert with her lifetime pursuit of excitement to divert attention from the gnawing pain within that is unrelated to her medical condition. Whittaker stands with her, doing brilliant work in a somewhat less flashy role, and together with the writers they craft a incredibly chic, deeply moving and highly insightful piece of entertainment that is feminist to its bones without preaching and an absolute success. More again, soon, please.