Shannon's Deal

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Shannon's Deal (1989 - 1991) was a drama on American television about a successful Philadelphia corporate lawyer named Jack Shannon (Jamey Sheridan) who lost his family and his job to a compulsive gambling habit.

"I thought I was a big shot. Big money, big house, big car...I thought I held all the cards. I thought I could pick the winner every time, I thought I could smell it...but the whole thing was built on garbage. I treated my wife badly and I knew it and I didn't stop and one day she walked. She took my daughter with her. I started gambling big time, crazy stuff, long shot stuff. I turned into the kind of man that I'd grown up hating. Making the big bucks and being made a partner wasn't enough to buy that off. I'm just kinda starting from scratch, trying to keep things low pressure." - the opening credits narration by Shannon

Independent filmmaker John Sayles met with NBC Entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff in 1987 and pitched a story about a lawyer who avoids going to court. Sayles wrote the two-hour pilot episode that aired on NBC on June 4, 1989. (Sayles received a 1990 Edgar Award for his teleplay for the pilot.) Once the show got picked up as a series, Sayles directed one of the episodes, and had a cameo in the "Words to Music" episode as a jealous boyfriend who gets into a confrontation with Shannon.

Sayles worked with former lawyer Stan Rogow who became the show's executive producer. The show took a cynical view of the legal system as Sayles remarked in an Entertainment Weekly article, "Shannon's a fixer. There are very few clear-cut victories in his life, and one of the only ones he gets is that his clients don't go to court. You can like Shannon, but you can't always come away thinking that [he] did the right thing or [he] won this one."

The show was cancelled after 13 episodes.