If Luke Perry won the lottery, he wouldn't buy any of that glitzy stuff for sale in the tony shops of Beverly Hills, 90210.

"I would like to raise 1,000 cattle ... I would like to build an arched bridge ... I would like to ride a thousand miles on horseback, and write about it," he says, musing about the possible benefits of a sudden financial windfall.

It's a talking point because Perry, who became famous as Dylan McCay, the charming bad boy of the long-running nighttime soap "Beverly Hills, 90210," is one of the stars of "Windfall."

The new NBC drama, which follows the fate of 20 lottery winners, premieres tonight.

Perry plays Peter Schaefer, a husband and father with a seemingly happy marriage.

"He's an ordinary guy. Blue-collar. Goes to work. Comes home. He's Joe Lunchbox," says Perry. "I want him to be just a salt-of-the-earth guy. When he says it, you can believe it."

Because of the lingering memories of Perry as the less-than-honorable McCay, the casting isn't what audiences might expect. But that's the point.

"There were other parts in the script that would have been a more obvious choice for me to play ... but that other stuff I can play easy. No problem. This is something I haven't done, so I'm going to try it," says the Ohio-born actor.

Laurie McCarthy co-created this tale about a disparate group of friends and chance acquaintances who find their lives in a Midwestern town thrown into upheaval when they share a $386 million winning ticket. Built-in complications include the fact that Schaefer's best friend, Cam-eron Walsh (Jason Gedrick), is in love with Schaefer's wife, Nina (Lana Parrilla).

McCarthy says with a laugh that the idea for the series may have sprung "from years and years of buying lottery tickets and dating poor boyfriends and thinking, 'OK, if I won the lottery would I still want to be with him.' "

She describes the series' story line as "very much about the vicissitudes of love, and where your heart might go when it feels kind of untethered."

McCarthy first met Perry when she worked on "Beverly Hills, 90210." She has observed his career choices since.

"He would try different things over the years, which I thought was great. I felt like he was the most willing to stretch. He's such a capable actor, and for someone who was so famous, he was really willing to kind of bury his persona in roles, whenever he was allowed to do so."

Perry says that knowing McCarthy and having also previously worked with David Semel, who directed the "Windfall" pilot episode, were obvious pluses. But he also felt "the premise seemed to offer lots of opportunities for reinvention" and didn't "box the characters into a corner, as often happens on TV series."

Calling to confirm a meeting at a Beverly Hills restaurant, Perry had remarked, "I'll be the one who looks like me!"

He did, although it's more than 15 years since the debut of "Beverly Hills, 90210," made him a heartthrob.

Perry is now 40 and the father of two young children, Jack and Sophie.

He's more eager to talk about his passion for history than his personal life, or his career, especially his high-profile time on "90210," where he starred from 1990-1995 and again from 1998 to the series' conclusion in 2000.

"When you are younger, you can have only work, and I did for a long time. But it doesn't command my attention that way any more. A lot of the mysteries and the questions I had about it I've figured out, but life offers up mysteries every day," he says.