Montreal: The standards for primetime drama on Quebec TV are high. Productions Sovimage president Vincent Gabriel, producer with Andre Dupuy of the new Reseau TVA series Tribu.com, says the audience threshold for drama is in the 1.2 million range. And unless there’s something very specific about a show’s mandate, other than audience, underperforming series are promptly canceled, easily replaced by programmers with less expensive and often no less competitive teleromans.

In the 10-hour series Tribu.com, thirtysomething professionals share their ambitions, insecurities and sexual proclivities against a backdrop of the wonderfully ironic and carnivorous world of an advertising agency.

In developing the show’s bible, Gabriele (Diva, Caserne 24) says head writer Michelle Allen’s (Diva, Lobby, Graffiti) characters took form "through the filter of their sexuality."

Allen’s cowriters are Danielle Dansereau and Chantale Cadieux. The directors are Francois Bouvier (Gypsies, Urgence) and Phil Comeau (Le Secret de Jerome, Lassie).

Leads include Caroline Neron in the role of Stella Trudel (a transposed character from the fashion world series Diva), Serge Dupire and Marie-France Marcotte. The per-episode budget is just under $500,000.

Sovimage is developing an eight-hour doc miniseries for Canal D and TVA on the world of spying from a uniquely Canadian perspective, and a second major doc series for Radio-Canada.

L’Ange de Goudron shoots

Denis Chouinard’s newest feature film, L’Ange de Goudron, is a contemporary dramatization of the hopes and fears of an Algerian immigrant family on the eve of gaining Canadian citizenship.

The film opens as the family patriarch, played by Zinedine Soualem (Chacun cherche son chat, La Haine), nervously prepares for the cherished dream of citizenship only to discover his rebellious 19-year-old son has suddenly disappeared, apparently involved in potentially dangerous political activities. Raba Ait Ouyahia, a talented hip-hop artist and producer born in Belgium and educated in Montreal, makes his movie debut as the son Hafid. Hiam Abbass plays Hafid’s mother. Catherine Trudeau is a young woman entirely taken with Hafid who joins Soualem’s character in a desperate search for his son. Raymond Cloutier, Gary Boudreault, Francois Papineau and Maude Guerin round out the supporting cast.

Chouinard is a graduate of the Judith Weston School for Acting Techniques in New York, His first feature, Clandestins, a harrowing tale of immigrant stowaways, was selected for more than 25 international festivals in ’97 and ’98, winning important prizes at Namur, Locarno, Paris and Montreal.

Set in Montreal’s working-class neighborhoods and Northern Quebec, L’Ange de Goudron (Tar Angel) shoots over 35 days to March 21. The $4-million movie was first developed as a coproduction with France, says Luc Vandal, producer with Roger Frappier at Max Films. Vandal says the coproduction route was set aside when the French coproducer was turned down by Canal +, the Vivendi Universal pay channel.

STCVQ craft credits go to DOP Guy Dufaux (Eye of the Beholder), art director Mario Hervieux and costume designer Denis Sperdouklis. Richard Comeau (Maelstrom) is editing. Suppliers include Moliflex-White and Covitec for laboratory services.

Funding sources include Telefilm Canada, SODEC, the Canadian Television Fund, pay-TV movie channel Super Ecran and distributor Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm.

Micro-managing at Shanda

Shanda Productions’ new slate includes science, cultural and social documentaries for networks and specialty channels across Canada and in Europe.

The seven-year-old house is headed by producer Dan Shannon and operates its own video and sound editing suites and a small shooting stage. Overhead is kept in check, sales and licensees are varied and many, and Shanda is increasingly active in new media, producing for the Web and DVD distribution.

The house’s newest production is Space Horizons (Demain"l’Espace) a seven-part series on space exploration from the evolving role of satellites to extra-planetary voyage. The series incorporates some 70 interviews with astronauts, scientists and politicians in North America and Europe, computer-animation sequences sourced from the international space industry, and a smaller amount of archival materials.

Shannon says the wider range of source materials means the show "is not just the NASA catalogue."

Shannon directed with Isabelle Depelteau on a budget of just under $1 million. Tube Studios produced the opening graphics. Space Horizons is licensed by TFO, TV5 Quebec-Canada, Knowledge Network, SCN, Access in Alberta and La Cinquieme of France, which invested $160,000. Space: The Imagination Station "has made an offer."

Telefilm Canada helped with development, while production money comes from SODEC, Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund and the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund.

Shannon says content data used in the series is being retooled for other delivery channels, including DVD-ROM and interactive (www.spaceville.TV).

Also in production at Shanda, the one-hour cultural doc Passage and the three-hour societal trends doc series The Saga of Secret Communications.

Two years in the making, Passage is the story of a Quebec-born quadriplegic dancer’s exploration of integrated dance with an able-bodied British dancer. It’s been picked up by Radio-Canada’s Doc en Stock series and CBC Newsworld’s Rough Cuts.

Saga examines the latest inventions and technology used by groups and governments to conceal their own communications as they spy on real and perceived enemies. It’s budgeted at $750,000 and is a minority coproduction with GuilGamesh of Paris. It’s been presold to French educational net La Cinquieme and is licensed in Canada by TFO and Canadian Learning Television, a CHUM Television specialty channel.

Part of Shanda’s growing success, says Shannon, "is micro-managing windows so everyone gets what they want."

Projects in development include a series on "the remarkable lives of women," with interest from WTN and TFO; a world-beat concept of rhythm and song; a one-hour exploratory doc on the dreams, history and violent realities of Haiti as seen through its art; and a kids science and adventure show with a Milky Way coating.

Shanda also sells on behalf of other producers, on a project basis. Shannon and producer Josette Gauthier will be attending MIPDOC (March 31 to April 1), MIP-TV (April 2-6) and the Banff Television Festival (June 10-15).

Production notes

Muse Entertainment producers Michael Prupas and Irene Litinsky are already very busy with a slate that includes the live-action special F/X family series The Neverending Story, directed by Giles Walker.

The Stork Derby, a TV movie and historical drama from director Mario Azzopardi (Bone Daddy, Total Recall), initially developed by Motion International, is slated to start principal photography March 26. Karyn Nolan of Toronto is coproducing in association with CHUM Television.

A Scandal in Bohemia, the third movie in the Sherlock Holmes mystery collection, starring Kenneth Welsh and Matt Frewer, preps in April. Prupas and Steve Hewitt of Hallmark Entertianment are exec producers.

Also on tap is the CBS TV service movie Winter’s Heart, with Jerry London directing.

Muse is in advanced development on the new one-hour series Higher Learning, aka The University Series, a drama set in a university ethics class from writer Bruce M. Smith (The Sleep Room, The Hunger). The project could go into production as early as April, says Muse communication director Betty Palik.

Muse and new Toronto partner, producer Bernie Zukerman, are anticipating funding decisions on four drama projects for CBC and CTV.

* Producer Ian Boyd of Films de l’Isle is prepping the new Rodrigue Jean (Full Blast) feature Max et Lionne. It’s set to film in Moncton, NB, starting in mid-April, moving on to Winnipeg in early June.

* Production has been suspended on the La Fete/Microtainment Plus coproduction sitcom Vampire High. While the Canadian partners have held up their end of the financing bargain – more than half the $10-million budget. However, the remaining $4.5 million of the financing has seemingly fallen through, according to sources at La Fete. Filming on 13 of 26 half-hour episodes was completed at the Cine Cite Montreal soundstage.

La Fete management says all current accounts will be paid and the show will be refinanced if necessary, and completed. *