Windfall pioneered a hybrid form of factually-based drama with Born With Two Mothers, using a combination of actors with professionals playing themselves. We went on to make Richard is My Boyfriend, where a real judge decides whether a woman with learning difficulties should be sterilized.
As one of the leading producers of science & technology programmes, we have a unique ability to breathe life into potentially dry subjects. By winning the trust of Nobel-Prize-winning scientists and using cutting-edge computer technology we regularly win awards for our science series. The Emmy award-winning series DNA (PBS/Channel 4) was described in the Daily Telegraph as having “The dramatic tension of a Hollywood movie".
Windfall has a long tradition of producing observational documentaries with a sensitive, committed approach. This has not only won awards, but also the respect of the professions we depict. Films such as The Decision, Fifteenand The Lion’s Den have been used to help train social workers, doctors and teachers. (We have several major long-term documentary projects in development.)
Our influence on historical documentaries has also been notable. The Windfall trademark combination of highly original visuals and gripping storytelling has distinguished such series as Escape from Colditz, Men of Iron, and Commando.
Films such as Wanted: Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kidset a trend in adventure history documentaries, putting the researchers’ quest to find the real story at the centre of the film. More recently in The Great Escape: Revealed, we followed archaeologists and veterans in an unprecedented investigation into the remarkable creation of a se cret escape route.
In Reality On The Rocks, we reinvented the science documentary by using comic actor Ken Campbell’s quest to get to grips with time and space as a way of bringing hilarity to a subject long associated with impenetrable equations.
Windfall has also set the trend for several popular television formats. The Tourist Trap is seen by many as the first reality TV show, using spy-on-the-wall footage long before contemporary shows such as Big Brother. Lost! was also a television first, with even the cameramen kept in the dark of the secret location they were about to be dropped in.
Formed in 1988 by three ex-BBC producers, David Dugan, Ian Duncan and Oliver Morse, Windfall Films continues to set the standard for serious programming in the UK.
