Ken Finkleman, nominated for a Gemini in the best direction in a dramatic series category for his work on cbc’s Foolish Heart, is sure he doesn’t stand a chance. ‘I don’t think I’ll win. I think [that episode] is a comedy. I think they put it in the wrong category.’

The episode is principally a two-hander shot in black and white wherein stranded partygoers are trapped together on Christmas Eve and engage in the kind of repartee familiar to connoisseurs of ’40s screwball comedy.

‘It’s written to be a Rosalind Russell/Cary Grant kind of exchange and it’s a silly circumstance, a 1940s-style situation,’ says Finkleman.

The nominated show itself is one of two episodes delayed by a strike that held up post-production on the series. The first four episodes were packaged and shown in 1998, followed by a 1999 airing of the series, which this time included the remaining two installments for a full slate of six episodes.

In the Foolish Heart six-pack, Finkleman linked disparate elements together. ‘There were six love stories and each was in a very different style to the next. I wouldn’t have called it an inspiration, I was just thinking of something different to do,’ he says.

Finkleman is now working on a show in which he stars called Foreign Objects, which he has also written, is exec producing and directing. Similar to Foolish Heart, this series consists of six short stories, each quite different from the next and loosely connected by ‘the slightest of threads – that I’m a documentary filmmaker making these films and sometimes we see the film that’s being made, sometimes it just gets him in a situation.

‘I don’t have any method of how do the job,’ says Finkleman. ‘I sort of search around and read stuff. I don’t have any sort of agenda, I just cast around and try to figure out what to do, and out of that neurotic frenzy, settle on something.

‘I’m constantly trying to do something different. That’s why I’m not very good at doing a series. I run out of steam after about six episodes. Actually, I run out of steam after one and I have to do something else.’ *