Where was Frauds filmed? Location guide for ITV drama
One popular tourist destination doubles for another in the new comedic thriller.
Summer may be over, but ITV's Frauds is bringing a bit of extra sun to our living rooms, with the heist thriller taking place against a picturesque coastal backdrop.
Suranne Jones and Jodie Whittaker lead the piece, playing estranged partners-in-crime Bert and Sam, who come back together to plot one last scheme for a wealthy, enigmatic client.
To secure a life-changing fee, they enlist a heist crew in true genre style, each of whom has their own set of skills – and their own stock of dangerous baggage that could derail the plan entirely.
If the cinematic setting of Frauds has left you dreaming of your own sunny escape, here's your guide to where the comical ITV thriller is set (and the location where it was actually filmed).
Where is ITV's Frauds filmed?
ITV drama Frauds was filmed in Tenerife, a Spanish island and popular tourist destination located off the coast of northwest Africa.
However, Tenerife is not playing itself in Frauds (so to speak), as the story of the show is set in mainland Spain; specifically, the southern province of Málaga, where co-creator Anne-Marie O'Connor has spent a significant amount of time.
She told press that she was excited by the "spaghetti western feel" that the area can provide, adding that "there's a real otherness to it, a dry heat and that kind of outlaw feel you get in places like Las Vegas".
O'Connor continued: "Even in famous places like Marbella, where you turn up and everything's catered for, actually you just need to scratch the surface and it can be lawless."
When scouting for shooting locations, executive producer Katie Kelly echoed the need for both a "glistening" outward appearance and a lesser known "underbelly" to tell the story that O'Connor and co-writer Suranne Jones had planned.
"Shooting in Tenerife offered us everything we needed and more," she added, explaining why the popular Canary Islands destination was used as a substitute for Málaga.
"In a small area you can have a sort of Costa del Sol beachside strip full of clubs... and then suddenly you can find yourself in what looks like an old Spanish town or up in lush, verdant mountains."
Frauds co-star Jodie Whittaker shared that enthusiasm for Tenerife, telling press that she found it an "incredible" place to work, describing travel for location shoots as one of the "great" things about her job.
"It was stunning," she recalled. "My house was in a little town called La Laguna up in the north. It is literally gonna be in my top five places in life, I loved it so much."
Whittaker noted that she had been to Tenerife on family holidays many years ago, but had never spent any significant amount of time in the north of the island, where she found the city of Santa Cruz to be another "brilliant" highlight.
The sub-tropical climate and western-style landscapes certainly give Frauds a distinct look among an occasionally homogenous TV landscape, but for O'Connor "it just felt like a really good place for a load of cons to be hanging out".
She concluded: "It's a part of the world that we think we know as British people… but we also don't know it."
Frauds premieres ITV1 and ITVX on Sunday 5th October 2025.
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Authors
David Craig is the Senior Drama Writer for Radio Times, covering the latest and greatest scripted drama and comedy across television and streaming. Previously, he worked at Starburst Magazine, presented The Winter King Podcast for ITVX and studied Journalism at the University of Sheffield.
