A sun-soaked new ITV crime caper that unites two of British telly’s biggest stars, Frauds is here to deliver some Spanish balm and high-stakes heists to your October viewing. The series teams up Doctor Who and Broadchurch’s Jodie Whittaker with Gentleman Jack and Corrie star Suranne Jones in a clash of the telly titans. Expect twists galore and a robbery that even Danny Ocean would be proud of, as the duo set to work relieving Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum of a priceless masterpiece.
We spoke to executive producer Katie Kelly and location manager Isidro Gonzalez to get the lowdown on the six-part series – including the sun-drenched Iberian locations that aren’t quite where you’d expect them to be.
What is Frauds about?
Co-created by Suranne Jones and Anne-Marie O’Connor, the pair behind 2023’s ITV drama Maryland, Frauds is a heist thriller with a twist. The two old friends at its heart, reformed expat Sam (Whittaker) and unreformed ex-con Bert (Jones), have drifted apart during the latter’s time in prison on the Costa del Sol. Where there was once trust and teamwork, there’s now just a whole lot of suspicion and mistrust.
Bert, though, wants Sam to team up for one final payday: to steal Salvador Dali’s painting The Great Masturbator from Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum. To add more complexity to an already complex dynamic, Bert has terminal cancer. This will be ‘one last job’ in every sense.
Helping complete this Iberian Ocean’s are a band of locals and fellow expats, including sharp-elbowed magician’s assistant Jackie Diamond, street smart local Caitlin (Thais Martin) and art forger Bilal.
Ocean’s Eleven, though, isn’t quite the right reference here, explains Kelly: ‘We never wanted it to be a super-slick Ocean's-type heist; we wanted this to feel like something real people could do. [There’s] a lot of Thelma and Louise [in it], and Sexy Beast. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels for the fun of that relationship, and how they’re conning each other. Our director was influenced by Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul too.’
Who stars in Frauds?
Starring alongside Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker is Elizabeth Berrington as Jackie Diamond and Love’s Kitchen’s Lee Boardman as magician Craig, her narcissistic partner.
Talisa Garcia (Baptiste) as Miss Take, a fiftysomething trans woman who runs a Costa del Sol nightclub and gets caught up with the gang. I May Destroy You’s Karan Gill is Bilal, a Bradford art forger who draws the unwanted attention of unscrupulous money lender Deegs (Ordeal by Innocence’s Christian Cooke).
Where was Frauds filmed?
In keeping with its characters’ sleight of hand, Frauds is set in and around Marbella but was filmed almost entirely on Tenerife between January and April this year. The Canary island’s capital, Santa Cruz, was its epicentre.
‘We didn't want to sell a “dodgy criminals in the Costa del Sol” version of the world,’ says Kelly. ‘We wanted to lean into the eccentricity of our group of characters. We wanted to make the landscape a character – it was really important to recreate the landscape of southern Spain in Tenerife.’
Bert’s prison release was filmed at a water plant in Candelaria, Tenerife
The show opens with Sam pulling out to a dusty prison complex to collect the freshly released Bert. Except that, IRL, the building is not a prison at all, but a water plant. ‘We built a guard hut and railings and barbed wire,’ explains Kelly of the set dress. ‘The plant opened three months after we filmed there,’ adds location manager Gonzales. ‘It looks just like a jail.’
Sam’s house is Don Leandro in La Esperanza, Tenerife
With her criminal days behind her, Sam has embraced a solitary life with her chickens in the Spanish hills. Finding her house was one of the big challenges for the production, remembers Kelly: ‘A lot of those sorts of places have been turned into being Airbnbs or are rented out, because tourism is huge in Tenerife.’ The property, which is also rentable, is close to Mount Teide, the island’s highest point, and the altitude caused unexpected challenges. ‘It’s 35 degrees at the coast, then you drive for an hour and you’re in the clouds,’ says Kelly. ‘They'd open the door and come in the house and the cloud would sort of come in after them.’
📍 Here’s how to rent Don Leandro
Cheeky Blinders is Aicá Maragá restaurant-club in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife
Frauds introduces us to the larger-than-life characters who make their living on the Costa del Sol’s strip, including a nightclub with the winky name of Cheeky Blinders. The club is actually Tenerife tapas restaurant and nightspot Aicá Maragá, where you might not find any magician’s acts but you will find the odd musical extravaganza.
📍 Here’s how to visit Aicá Maragá
Miss Take’s club is Music Hall Tavern Tenerife in Santa Cruz
‘We talked a lot about Pedro Almodóvar in terms of Miss Take’s world,’ says Kelly of the other main nightclub location in the show, run by cabaret impresario Miss Take. Music Hall Tavern (MHT) was redressed for Miss Take’s flamboyant performances.
📍 Visit the official MHT website
The bullring was filmed at Plaza de Toros in Toledo
Mainland Spain features in the show too. Madrid’s Reina Sofia makes a starring appearance in later episodes – see below – and Toledo’s famous old bullring makes a cameo too, when, like a pair of rival matadors, Sam and Bert have a tense early showdown. ‘That was the first scene Anne-Marie wrote and it's the first time we get a proper sense of what's gone on between [Sam and Bert] and the beef they've had in their past,’ says Kelly. The exterior shots were of Tenerife’s derelict bullring in Santa Cruz but the interior is Toledo. ‘It was an incredible place: the scale of it and the history,’ says Kelly.
The hotel escape was filmed at Hotel Atlantida in Santa Cruz
In episode 3, Sam and Bert get some more practice in going incognito as they dress up as maintenance staff to rescue their art forger, Bilal, from English criminal Deegs. The scene was filmed at this 4-star hotel in Tenerife’s capital.
The heist was filmed at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía
The centre point of Frauds is the gang’s plan to steal the Dali painting from Madrid’s famous old Reina Sofía museum. ‘We weren't expecting to get permission to actually film in the Reina Sofía,’ remembers Kelly. ‘We were thinking about how to recreate the museum in Tenerife somewhere but at the last minute they said: “Yeah, come do it.” They're closed on a Tuesday, so they let us have one day and one night. It was unreal to be able to film the actual thing. It was exciting to stand in front of the real painting and be like: we're gonna do a programme about stealing this!’
Thanks to some cunning editing, you won’t notice that not everything set inside the museum was filmed there. The giant goods elevator used by the gang was filmed at Santa Cruz’s arts space TEA (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes). ‘The elevator there is huge,’ says Gonzales. ‘We took a picture with the whole team inside.’
📍 How to visit the Reina Sofia
The cathedral interiors were filmed in the Church of San Agustín, Santa Cruz
An early episode sees Bert and Sam dusting off their old heist skills to steal a religious artifact from a church. The building’s exteriors were filmed at Iglesia de la Concepción, 30 minutes outside of Santa Cruz, the sequence required the interiors to be filmed inside the town’s big Catholic church.
‘The bishopric gave us permission right before Christmas’, remembers Gonzales, ‘which was a great relief. They want to know what you're going to shoot. A few years ago a Spanish rap singer made a music video inside one of the most important basilicas in Valencia and there was a scandal.’
How can I watch Frauds?
The first episode airs at 9pm Sunday, October 5. All six episodes are streaming on ITVX on the same day.
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