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What would you do if that wildest friend from your youth reappeared? Imagine if you were battling a terminal illness and felt completely unburdened? What if you felt guilty for getting your friend imprisoned a decade back? 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 almost unstoppable pair of scam artists who still had a collection of costumes left over from your glory days and a deep desire for one last thrill?

All this and more are the questions that Frauds, an original series starring Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker, flings at us on a exhilarating, intense six-part ride that traces two conwomen bent on pulling off one last job. Echoing a recent project, Jones co-created this with her collaborator, and it retains similar qualities. Just as the mystery-thriller formula was used as background to the psychodramas slowly revealed, here the grand heist the protagonist Roberta (Bert) has carefully planned in prison since her diagnosis is a means to explore an exploration of companionship, deceit, and affection in all its forms.

Bert is released into the care of Sam (Whittaker), who lives nearby in the Spanish countryside. Guilt stopped 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 messed up.” And for her new, if brief, life on the outside, she has bought her plenty of new underwear, because there are many ways for women companions to show repentance and one is the acquisition of “a big lady-bra” following ten years of uncomfortable institutional clothing.

Sam wants to carry on leading her quiet life and look after Bert till the end. Bert has other ideas. And when your daftest friend devises alternative schemes – well, you often find yourself going along. Their former relationship gradually reasserts itself and Bert’s plans are already in motion by the time she reveals the complete plan for the heist. This show plays around with the timeline – producing engagement rather than confusion – to give us the set-pieces first and then the explanations. So we watch the pair stealing gems and timepieces off wealthy guests’ wrists at a funeral – and bagging a golden crown of thorns because why wouldn’t you if you could? – before ripping off their wigs and turning their mourning clothes inside out to transform into vibrant outfits as they stride out and down the chapel stairs, awash with adrenaline and loot.

They need the assets to fund the plan. This involves hiring a document expert (with, unknown to the pair, a gambling problem that is due to attract unneeded scrutiny) in the form of magician’s assistant Jackie (Elizabeth Berrington), who has the technical know-how to help them remove and replace the target painting (a renowned Dali painting at a prominent gallery). Additionally, they recruit art enthusiast Celine (Kate Fleetwood), who specialises in works by male artists exploiting women. She is equally merciless as any of the gangsters their accomplice and the funeral theft are drawing towards them, including – most dangerously – their old boss Miss Take (Talisa Garcia), a contemporary crime lord who had them running scams for her from their teens. She did not take well to their declaration of independence as independent conwomen so there’s ground to make up there.

Unexpected developments are layered between deepening revelations about Bert and Sam’s history, so you experience the full enjoyment of a Thomas Crown Affair-ish caper – executed with no shortage of brio and admirable willingness to skate over rampant absurdities – alongside a mesmerisingly intricate portrait of a friendship that is possibly as toxic as Bert’s cancer but just as impossible to uproot. Jones delivers arguably her best and most complex performance yet, as the damaged, resentful Bert with her lifetime pursuit of excitement to distract from the gnawing pain within that has nothing to do with her medical condition. Whittaker supports her, delivering excellent acting in a slightly less interesting part, and together with the creative team they create a fantastically stylish, deeply moving and highly insightful work of art that is feminist to its bones devoid of lecturing and in every way a triumph. More again, soon, please.