The Fortune: 5's new drama stars Yorkshire's Eleanor Tomlinson, Matthew Lewis and All Creatures' Callum Woodhouse

For café worker Amanda Blakefield, it seems to do the latter.

The Fortune is a new four-part psychological drama series starring Poldark actress Eleanor Tomlinson as Amanda, whose life appears happy and settled with her husband Jimmy, played by Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis, and their son Luke.

But when Amanda unexpectedly inherits a vast fortune from a man she has never met, or even heard of, her world begins to unravel.

Drawn into the mysterious world of the Worrall family, Amanda soon discovers that Martin Worrall sits at the centre of a dynasty haunted by long-buried secrets.

The Channel 5 series, which was filmed in Hartlepool, also stars All Creatures Great and Small actor Callum Woodhouse as Martin’s vengeful son, Anthony.

Tomlinson, 34, who was born in London but grew up in Beverley, East Yorkshire, describes Amanda as an ordinary woman forced into extraordinary circumstances.

“I watch a lot of true crime documentaries, and I think they all tap into the same idea: who can you trust? Who do you really know? What’s safe, and what isn’t?” she says.

“That’s what made the scripts so interesting to me. There’s something very ordinary and relatable about this woman and this family, and then suddenly this extraordinary thing happens to them.”

She says she was drawn to Amanda because, before the inheritance, she was genuinely content with her life.

“Amanda is happy with her life, she’s happy with her lot, and I think that’s pretty rare in television,” she explains.

“Quite often, you get characters who are constantly striving for something else, or where something is missing in their lives. But Amanda is genuinely content, and that’s what made her interesting to me.

“Then suddenly, all this money lands in her lap. She’s also grown up with this sadness in her life: she doesn’t know her father, and now her mum is struggling with dementia, so she’s unable to ask the questions she may always have wanted answers to.

"I think Amanda carries that sadness with her.

“At the same time, she doesn’t want her life to change. She doesn’t want to risk what she already has.

“So I really related to her in that sense. She’s happy, she doesn’t feel like she needs more, and I thought that made her a really interesting character.”

Lewis, 36, says the series explores the complicated impact money can have on ordinary people.

“It’s in the title, The Fortune, after all,” explains the Leeds-born actor.

“A lot of people who you’d consider financially ‘normal’ are struggling right now. Everyone’s trying to figure out how to navigate things and find their footing.

“So if someone suddenly dropped a huge amount of money into your lap, it’s interesting to think about how that would change not only you, but also the people around you.

"Again, I thought that was another really compelling psychological aspect of the story, and something that feels very relevant today.”

Woodhouse, 32, who is best known for his period drama roles, says he relished the opportunity to play a villain for the first time.

“There were so many firsts for me. Obviously, staying with my parents and filming in places I grew up visiting was a huge draw, but also being able to do something set in the modern day was really exciting,” says the Durham-born actor.

“I’ve largely done period pieces, the Thirties and Forties, and I’ve pretty much only ever played posh boys with an RP accent. They’ve always been really nice characters as well.

"So doing something modern, in my own accent, and playing a bit of a villain was really new for me.

“It was also quite challenging. I almost had to relearn how to act in my own accent, because it had been about 11 years and I just hadn’t used it on screen. I’d sort of forgotten how to do it properly.”

Lewis and Woodhouse, who both grew up in the north of England, also spoke warmly about filming closer to home.

“Being a northerner myself, I absolutely love any opportunity to film in the North,” says Lewis.

“The regions often get the rough end of the deal in a lot of ways, but I’ve actually been very fortunate in my career. I left Leeds more than 10 years ago, but I’ve still had opportunities to work back up North.”

“It really felt like a homecoming for me,” adds Woodhouse.

“We were filming just over the road from where my mum works, so we’d meet up for lunch sometimes, and on some days I was even staying with my mum and dad, which was really lovely.

“I left home at 18 to go straight to drama school, and then stayed in London and have been working there ever since.

"So for those couple of months, I got to experience something I’d never really had before: going to work during the day and then coming home to sit around the dinner table with my mum and dad.

"We’d all talk about how our days had been, and that was something I’d missed out on because I left home so young.”

The Fortune airs on Channel 5 on Tuesday, June 2.