The Syndicate (9pm, BBC1, 27 March) is one of those tick-box dramas that, having watched it, leaves you feeling a bit dirty and used, so shamelessly - yet ultimately ineffectively - have you been manipulated.

Set in fictional discount supermarket Right Buy U - in real life a Best-one in Leeds - it tells the not at all implausible story of a group of hard-up shop workers who are one minute facing redundancy and the next winning the lottery - but not before two of them, Stuart and his brother Jamie, have robbed the store and coshed manager Bob over the bonce.

Will Stuart and Jamie get caught? Will Bob be okay? Who voted against Stuart, who hadn’t paid into the syndicate for five weeks? Why doesn’t Leanne want the story to be in the national press? Why are Denise’s teeth so disgusting?

Who friggin cares? The story was so predictable (when told not to talk about their win, what does Stuart do?), it didn’t need to be signposted, but it was - more crudely than the garish blue and yellow store itself. We even had the: “What would you do if you won the lottery?” conversation.

Presumably the intention was to give some insight into the characters. It didn’t. Not insight you were bothered about anyway. If the script was bad, the characters were worse - little more than cheap copies of the folk in Shameless, Gavin & Stacey and earlier Kay Mellor efforts.

This is a Northern drama with a heart of gold in a literal rather than metaphorical sense. The only saving grace? Jane Horrocks isn’t in it - though admittedly, that’s quite a big saving grace.