The very first clue is that all the grips are in cruise wear – blinding tropical prints, a Tilley hat or two, shades and shorts. It’s the first week of December.

It’s not a day like all the rest on the Etobicoke set of Flash Forward, Atlantis Films’ half-hour, live-action series for kids aged eight to 12. There’s lobster and prime rib on the lunch table, and there are teary-eyed good-byes in the parking lot. After 26 episodes – 22 since June – today’s the last day of production.

Graeme Lynch (in his Partridge Family t-shirt) is directing episode 26, fitting because he directed the first four pilot episodes and a few in between. ‘Closure,’ he says. He’s instructing 14-year-old Vancouverite Jewel Staite (who stars as Becca) on how exactly to hold her cordless phone while he deftly steps over 16-year-old native Iowan Ben Foster (Tucker) who’s sprawled on the pink carpet between takes.

Set to air on Family Channel in Canada and on The Disney Channel in the u.s. in January, Flash Forward is the brainchild of executive producer Daphne Ballon, Alyson Feltes and Bernice Vanderlaan. Atlantis’ Seaton McLean’s also on as executive producer and Jan Peter Meyboom is the producer.

Flash Forward, with its grade school setting and local hangouts, is about Becca and Tucker, 13-year-old next-door neighbors born one day apart in the same hospital who’ve been best friends since. But now they’re victims of eighth grade, and we all know eighth grade can screw you up good ‘n plenty.

Foster and Staite — who surely, judging by their demeanor and talk of being in ‘l.a. for pilot season,’ must be cleverly disguised Baby Boomers – have been best friends on-screen and off since shooting the pilot episodes together in the summer of 1995. Good thing, too. Growing up on-camera is a tough job, a fact of which Ballon says she’s acutely aware.

‘Given how difficult I remember that age being, I can’t imagine coming to work everyday as I was going through that, particularly being in front of a camera,’ says Ballon. ‘Part of that vulnerability is what the show’s all about, and that’s why we cast them, but it’s still asking a lot of them.’

The story department, under executive story editor John May, went through great pains to have the characters and their lives ring true to media-savvy young viewers, even going as far as using online consultants. They posted a request on some usenet groups and ended up with a group of teens and preteens from l.a. to Saskatoon to Sydney e-mailing their responses to questions like ‘What’s your allowance?’, ‘Do sixth-graders have lockers?’ and ‘Would you ever call anyone a twinkie?’ (That particular piece of slang got a thumbs-down, by the way.)

Some of the feedback requests stemmed from items in the script which Disney didn’t consider ‘kidspeak.’ Disney, says May, was particularly demanding of the story team. The approval process was page-by-page, from original story pitch, to outline, to each draft.

‘We kept things very light,’ says May. ‘We weren’t writing `issue’ episodes or adolescent agony. It’s very gentle, but it strikes a chord.’

The budget for the series was $380,000 per half-hour and each episode had a five-day production schedule, which meant, says Ballon, that she needed to squeeze 110% out of cast and crew on a regular basis. ‘There’s a certain wear and tear, going week in and week out,’ she says. ‘And we put pressure on ourselves to keep the caliber of the scripts and the production as high as we could.’

Other than Staite (who previously worked on Space Cases) the other Canadian cast members include Asia Viera (Dudley the Dragon) of Toronto and Montreal’s Ricky Mabe (Mojave Frankenstein). Burbank, California’s Theodore Borders plays Miles and, at 13, he’s a veteran of Beverly Hills Cop 3 and er.

The series, while all-Canadian, is backed by Disney Channel, Family Channel, CanWest Global, the Cable Production Fund and Buena Vista International with help from the federal tax credit.

As Ballon watches yet another cast member finish his last scene, she apologizes. ‘You know, you’re getting me on the last day. I’m kind of sentimental.’

Meanwhile, the grips in island garb dig into the prime rib with relish.