Vancouver: An incredible upsurge in locally stimulated series production is cementing Vancouver’s reputation as a television town.

DaVinci’s Inquest (cbc/Barna-Alper/Chris Haddock) will wrap its first season next month, while Cold Squad (Keatley MacLeod/Atlantis) rewarms production for its second season this month.

Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy (Milestone/Alliance) also gears up next month; The Addams Family (Saban/Shavick) series continues production until next May; Betaville (Chesler/Perlmutter/River of Stone) goes until September; The Crow: Stairway to Heaven (Crescent) wraps next February; First Wave (Vidatron) wraps season one in late November; Dead Man’s Gun (Vidatron/Showtime) is going another 22 episodes right now; and Night Man (Crescent) is just getting going.

And we’re waiting to see which of any of four of the Lions Gate Entertainment (through Mandalay Television) series will come to Vancouver.

On the service side, Columbia TriStar and USA Network wrap 13 episodes of The Net in September.

Millennium has only two seasons to go before it meets its namesake (if you count 2000 instead of 2001 as the start of the new millennium). Fox renewed the series for the 1998/99 season and will continue to produce the show, starting later this summer in the Lions Gate Studios in North Vancouver, former home to sister show The X-Files.

Taking over the X-Files offices at Lions Gate Studios is Fox’s sci-fi series Strange Days for abc. Strange Days shot its pilot here earlier this year. And Fox is also shopping the two-part miniseries The Exorcist – yes, based on the horror features – around Vancouver looking for a July start.

For Paramount, busy executive producers Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo have an order for It’s True as a mid-season replacement series. The team’s syndicated series Sentinel has been renewed for a second season only as a mid-season replacement show and will produce 13 episodes. Bilson and DeMeo’s upn car series Viper is going into season-three production this month.

mgm is going ahead with 22 episodes of Outer Limits, Stargate and Poltergeist, which will keep The Bridge Studios packed.

– Sharon and Peg

The Lotus Eaters producer Sharon McGowan and writer Peggy Thompson are back with a new low-budget independent feature called Maggie and Lila (formerly titled Sex and Chocolate), which shoots until June 20 with director Anne Wheeler at the helm.

Distributed by Motion International and Germany’s Time Media, Maggie and Lila is a mother-daughter story: a law school dropout’s bohemian existence is invaded by her mother and kid brother fleeing a broken marriage.

The feature has been presold to Citytv, Superchannel and First Choice.

Wendy Crewson (Sue Rodriguez, Air Force One) plays the mother and Karyn Dwyer (Due South) the daughter. Supporting cast includes Peter Outerbridge (Kissed) and actress-novelist Ann-Marie MacDonald (I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing).

– Eye on film

Camera union IATSE Local 669 is expecting four new studio features – in the $20-million-plus range – to land in Vancouver this summer: Pittsburgh (mgm), Ball Busted (mgm), Double O Soul (no studio linked at press time) and Dudley Do Right (Universal).

Already confirmed are Paramount’s Double Jeopardy (with Tommy Lee Jones and Ashley Judd) and Sony’s Lake Placid. Disney’s I’ll Be Home for Christmas wrapped earlier this month.

– CBC Vancouver outlook

Along with other Canadian broadcasters, CBC Vancouver is talking up its production slated for the fall schedule. Along with DaVinci’s Inquest, Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy and new kids’ series Scoop and Doozie, CBC Vancouver has greenlit the pilot These Arms of Mine by creators Phil Savath and Susan Duligal.

Unveiled as a series proposal during the cbc’s search-in-the-form-of-a-lottery for new West Coast series a couple of years ago, one-hour Arms is about a group of friends and lovers in Vancouver trying to get by. It shoots in mid-October.

Returning cbc shows in production in Vancouver are parenting show Spilled Milk and Canadian Gardener.

Rae Hull, cbc’s new regional director of television, says not since series Northwood and The Odyssey has there been two network series out of CBC Vancouver. ‘We’re back on the rails,’ she says. ‘These are interesting b.c. stories placed squarely in this geography, culture and sensibility.’

Hull adds that along with some variety programs including the West Coast Music Awards, CBC Vancouver is backing the four-episode pilot for a daily talk show called In the Company of Women. As cbc ‘Canadianizes’ daytime, Women – which originally ran a couple of years ago as a regional show with hosts Maria Larose and Vena Sood – looked like a good candidate for the network, says Hull.

– Cold Squad reheated

As mentioned, b.c.’s first primetime hour-long drama series is forging ahead with a 15-episode second season for the Baton stations. Veteran line producer Richard Davis comes aboard to manage this season. Production is scheduled to run until December.

On the creative side, Bob Carney takes over as show runner after the same gig on Due South. And the Cold Squad gets two new team members: a rookie named Eddie and a female cop named Sandy. The homicide inspector has been recast with Peter Wingfield (Highlander).

The stages, meanwhile, have been rebuilt in the much larger premises at WC Studios, a former athletics club.

Executive producer Matt MacLeod says the goals this year include streamlining the look of the show, picking up the pace and focusing primarily on the Cold Squad team.

– BC Tel calling

Eest of Sarajevo, Ranfilm’s just-wrapped low-budget feature about the relationship between a Bosnian Serb and a Bosnian Muslim in East Vancouver, is the first project to receive funding from B.C. Tel’s New Media and Broadcast Fund, which was launched in February.

Sarajevo received $45,000 in interim financing and is one of 60 applications to the $10-million fund. The new fund will be paid out over five years in the form of loans, investments and grants.

– Kudos

CBC Vancouver’s Broadcast One newscast won three trophies from the National Radio Television News Directors Awards for outstanding journalism. Best continuing coverage award went to Broadcast One for its ongoing reporting of the troubled downtown east-side neighborhood of Vancouver. Best investigation award went to Wayne Williams for a piece on the life of kidnap victim Abby Drover, and the best feature award went to Andrew Younghusband for a piece on Vancouver Island’s Westcoast Trail.

– A nine-minute corporate video by Artray Film & Video for The Forest Alliance of B.C. won an international gold at the 1997 Mercury Awards, considered the top prize of the professional communications industry.

Eagles tells the story of how The Nature Conservancy of Canada, The Forest Alliance and the North Vancouver Outdoor School formed a partnership to protect the habitat of bald eagles in a small community near Whistler.

Howard Harding produced and Gil Letourneau was dop and shared editing with Jim Sprague.