The BBC’s new drama The Syndicate shows what happens to five people’s lives after winning £18 million in the lottery, but of course the lottery win is only the beginning of this story.

The show started off just before the press conference where the shop workers were about to be revealed to the press that they were the lucky winners of this week’s lottery rollover. However, the syndicate is a group of five and only three where there. Cue glum faces as we went back four days to find out what life was like before they were millionaires.

The main character Stuart has problems — his girlfriend and his Mum don’t get along. Finally his pregnant girlfriend decides to move back to her own mum and dad’s home taking their son with her and won’t move back in with Stuart until he has a place of his own. Eager to get his family back together he checks out some available flats but runs into a bit of a problem — a lack of money.

So he decides after years of working at the local Right Buy U supermarket he is entitled to a pay rise. Although the manager, played by Tim Spall, agrees the land has been bought by another company and their beloved shop will be closing down and taking their jobs with it. And to make matters worse Stuart finds out that his girlfriend has just gone into labour. All his pressures and stresses lead to him sucking on his inhaler every five minutes.

Stuart clearly needs more money to get his family life back on track, but none of the honest options are helping him out. So his brother Jamie, otherwise known as Harry Potter’s Neville Longbottom, also works at the supermarket and comes up with a plan to help themselves out financially — steal from their own tills. Inevitably it all goes wrong and Jamie ends up smashing a bottle of alcohol over Tim Spall’s head as he unexpectedly comes back into the shop realising he has forgotten his phone and ends up being rushed to A&E.

In among the statements made to the police, frantic trips to the hospital and a life on the line the group find out that they have won the lottery. Their troubles are behind them, but before they can celebrate their lottery ticket needs to be verified which leads to the oddest part of the show. As Stuart has money problems he has lapsed on his weekly contribution to the lottery money so technically he is not entitled to a share of the money.

Frustrated, as his girlfriend is already spending their anticipated millions, Stuart does have one last shred of hope; the rest of the syndicate vote on whether they think he should be allowed his share of the money regardless. The vote is not unanimous and so the deciding vote comes down to the man in a coma, who luckily has just woken up and decides quite quickly that Stuart is allowed his share in a poor attempt to add some suspense.

And so we end up back where we started, revealing that Stuart hasn’t collapsed from an asthma attack and was just running late. But as they, and their winnings, were shown off to the press the other characters revealed that they seem to have anything but ordinary lives too.

Based on the adverts for the show I was expecting something like Sugartown, a light and fluffy show which saw a community overcome their problems. Instead The Syndicate was just miserable and continued to pour the misery on as well making the show feel slow and unwatchable. And it was just one character’s life that we have learnt about so far and frankly I dread what is ahead of us.

Although the acting was good, the crux of the story — the lottery winnings — felt unnecessary as there was so much going on, but maybe will start to play a part later in the series.

The show continues on BBC One on Tuesdays at 9pm or catch up on BBC iPlayer.