Main Cast: Luke Perry, Lana Parrilla, Jason Gedrick, Sarah Wynter, D.J. Cotrona
Release Year: 2006
Country: US
Run Time: 60 minutes
Plot
Inspired by the many real-life stories of "instant millionaires" created by various state lotteries, the weekly, 60-minute Windfall dramatized the trials and tribulations of 20 friends who had pooled their resources to win a 386-million-dollar lottery jackpot. The series focused on nine main characters, and how their sudden wealth changed their lives, both for good and ill, with emphasis on the legal, ethical, and moral problems arising from overnight affluence. Luke Perry and Lana Parrilla headed the cast as married couple Peter and Nina, who had entered the lottery with their lifelong friends Cameron (Jason Gedrick) and Beth (Sarah Wynter), also married; the enormous financial windfall caused Nina and Cameron, who'd once been sweethearts, to seriously reconsider resuming their premarital romance. Others in the cast included D.J. Cotrona as Sean Mathers, who tried to shun the spotlight after winning his share of the lottery so as not to expose an unsavory secret in his past; Jon Foster as teenager Damien, who, in order to claim the money and cut the cord binding him to his parents, impulsively married a Russian woman to gain legal status as an adult; Alice Greczyn as another teenager named Frankie, caught in the crossfire when her separated parents declared open warfare after her father claimed he was entitled to half of her mother's winnings; Malinda Williams as Kimberly George, a single mom with big ambitions; and Jaclyn DeSantis as nurse Maggie Hernandez, whose efforts to be generous with her money often proved disastrous. Originally set to air on Fox in the fall of 2005, Windfall was purchased by NBC, which unveiled the series on June 8, 2006. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Windfall is a television series that aired on NBC. The plot of the series concerns a group of people in an unnamed small city who win a huge sum of money in a lottery.
The pilot episode was developed in early 2005, but ultimately passed over by FOX. In January 2006, NBC announced that they would air the series in the summer of 2006. The series first aired on Thursday, June 8, 2006, taking over ER's place for just the summer.
On August 31, 2006, NBC announced the show's cancellation by stating on its website that the episode that night would be the series finale. Controversially, NBC also gave local affiliates the option of showing pre-season football instead and showing the final episode at each affiliates discretion. Many affiliates took them up on this, planning to show it either much later that night or at other odd days/times during the Labor Day weekend (for example, WNBC-TV in New York planned to show the episode at 12:30pm on September 3, 2006). [1][2]
In the UK and Middle East the show has been picked up by Five US and Showtime Arabia respectively. It is also shown in Ireland on the channel 3e weekdays at 3pm.
