It’s not like any show you’ve ever seen,’ says Michael Chechik executive producer of the dramatic children’s series The Odyssey. Now in its second season on the cbc, the show has garnered four Gemini nominations, including Best Youth Program or Series. While many producers make such lofty claims, The Odyssey actually delivers.

The series, conceived by Vancouver-based writers Paul Vitols and Warren Easton, chronicles the subconscious adventures of an 11-year-old boy, Jay Ziegler (played by Illya Woloshyn), who ends up in a coma after falling out of a tree. As he lies in the hospital watched over by his mother and a medical team, Jay’s mind journeys to another realm, the Downworld, a fantastic place where kids rule and a dictator named Brad demands taxes on toys.

Chechik says it’s a strange mix of The Road Warrior and fantasy. ‘We wanted to create a world depopulated by adults, inhabited by children who have taken it over and who have now remade it into their own vision. A place where a Safeway store becomes a roller skating rink.

‘When production designer Graeme Murray (who is nominated for a Gemini in art direction) was brought in, he introduced more of a fantasy element in the sets to soften that image, so it’s now a blend of both ideas.’

Vitols and Easton have an ‘uncanny ability to create scripts that are very much rooted in their imagination from childhood,’ says Chechik. ‘They seem to be able to access a vision of the world that a child has that few of us can remember.’

According to Chechik, cbc, which helped develop the series, felt the show had the potential to be something different.

‘There’s a real need to produce shows that are unique,’ he says. ‘cbc saw a niche in the market that they could go after – that of more sophisticated programming for kids which their parents would find interesting as well without it being condescending entertainment.’

In its first season last year, The Odyssey was given a plum spot on Sunday nights at 7 p.m. and drew an average audience of 100,000 viewers, half of which were adults even though the show is aimed at a younger audience. This year, Chechik says they’re struggling a bit harder in their new Monday 7:30 p.m. time slot.

Financing for the half-hour series, budgeted at $435,000 per episode (a fraction of most other dramatic series) was fairly straightforward, says Chechik, with major support from British Columbia Film and Telefilm Canada along with a service arrangement through the cbc and a foreign distribution deal with Alliance Releasing.

‘We’ve managed to conserve money on the budget through the use of less costly special effects,’ Chechik explains. ‘The show looks expensive,’ he says, ‘due largely to the elaborate sets created by a phenomenal art department headed up by Murray. We also push to shoot the show in five days and try to cut corners in ways that won’t show up on the screen.’

Working with an all-child cast often presents producers with major headaches. But Chechik says talent has been ‘one of the things we were most surprised with. I’ve been amazed by the level of performance we’ve been getting out of these kids. We expected that we would have to go right across the country to cast for the show, but with the exception of our star, Illya Woloshyn from Toronto, we’re doing all our casting out of Vancouver. These kids are bright, savvy, talented and hip. They know how to hit their marks. This, of course, bodes extremely well for the future of our dramatic production industry in Vancouver.’