Vision TV is breaking ground with plans to launch its first-ever, original, homegrown situation comedy series.

Cocreated and coproduced by British arrival Frances-Anne Solomon of Leda Serene Films, who is also directing the 13-part series, and Toronto scribe Vanz Chapman (Drop The Beat), who is heading up the writing team, Our Man is set at a Caribbean storefront church in the heart of downtown Toronto. The primary source of the sitcom’s humor is the ongoing friction between the ambitious but inept Youth Pastor Gooding and his pragmatic, easygoing father-in-law Pastor Stevens, whose lives are further complicated by the offbeat array of eccentrics and misfits who congregate at the church.

‘It’s a real oddball comedy,’ says Solomon, who earned a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for her 1997 feature Peggy Su!.

Solomon moved her 11-year-old production house to Toronto in 1999, bringing a British sensibility to the Canadian marketplace. Likewise, says Vision’s director of programming Paul de Silva, ‘the series is a cross between [Britcoms] Bless Me Father and Desmond. It deals with family, issues of community, faith, diversity and great music.’

A rarity in Canada, the sitcom may be the next logical step for Canadian producers looking to make affordable programming, as well as cash in on the country’s comedic talents.

Budgeted at $1.5 million, the series will be shot in front of a live studio audience with three cameras, starting in October, although studio space has yet to be confirmed.

‘I think there’s a quiet rebirth of multi-camera,’ says Solomon. ‘In the U.S. and U.K., it’s the cheapest way to make programming….It’s lowest common denominator drama.’

Chapman’s writing team includes Andrew Moody and Trey Anthony.

Cast includes Richard Chevelleau (Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict) and stand-up comic Russell Peters, as well as Jamaican talents Oliver Samuels and Leonie Forbes.

Vision has an exclusive first window to the series, which is tentatively slated to premier on the non-profit network in 2002/03.

Aysha takes turn at series

Keeping relatively low under the radar since his days as The Globe and Mail’s TV critic, John Haslett Cuff along with partner Sun-Kyung Yi have found a home for investigative journalism in their six-year-old doc house Aysha Productions.

With such successes as Thai Girls and Hostages to Justice under their belts, Yi and Haslett Cuff are hard at work these days on their first doc series, Love is Not Enough.

Thirteen half-hours for Life Network, the series chronicles the relationship therapy of four couples representing four different problems: money, sex and intimacy issues, jealousy and interracial issues.

The producers found couples interested in therapy, and then hooked them up with designated therapist Dorothy Ratusny, who maintains full therapeutic control over the documented sessions.

Yi and Haslett Cuff are both producing and have split directing duties to keep the production team small, intimate and consistent. ‘We wanted to keep full editorial control and establish a relationship with the subjects instead of having different crews coming in everyday,’ says Yi, who describes the doc, which will begin airing in January, as a series of cinema verite-style one-offs.

Cargo Releasing has international.

On the one-off front, Aysha is in post on Friday the 13th (working title) for CBC Newsworld’s Rough Cuts.

Featuring rookie director and producer Allison Grace, the doc chronicles the Hell’s Angels’ annual congregation on a Friday the 13th in Port Dover, ON.

‘It’s a portrait of a small town, asking the question: what happens when a town of 5,000 is invaded every year by bikers?’ explains Yi. ‘It showcases the conflict between one biker and a local cop who represents small-town values.’

Yi and Haslett Cuff are exec producing.

Vanishing Acts, set to air on CBC’s Witness Oct. 17, tells the stories of people who voluntarily go missing in pursuit of a new life.

In the one-hour doc, filmed across Europe and North America, Yi and Haslett Cuff, with the help of a Las Vegas missing-person tracker, located some missing people, including a man who disappeared from his life and wife in Scotland and was found in a state of madness in Montreal.

The project took two years to complete.

Yi is the doc’s producer/director and Haslett Cuff is producer/writer.

Mondo Vision has international.

On the development side, Aysha is working with Life on Child Prodigies, a one-off doc that profiles child prodigies in different stages, exposing the associated stresses and psychological impact of their exceptional lives.

Finally, Haslett Cuff is in development on a feature doc for TVOntario’s The View From Here called Adultery. ‘At the heart of the story is John’s relationship with his mother who was an adulteress,’ says Yi. ‘With John’s history as a TV critic, he wants to make something he hasn’t seen before, like a venue to talk about something as intimate as adultery and have a really frank and honest discussion.’

In this courageous feature doc, which the two are taking to MIPCOM in search of presales, Haslett Cuff, who is writing, producing and directing, will confront his mother and talk to victims of adultery about how it shaped their lives.

Red Apple makes docs for AAC channels

From chronicling hip restaurateurs to following the rock stars of the medical profession, Red Apple Entertainment is serving up docs for a bevy of Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting specialty channels.

Opening Soon is a fast-paced, 13-part, half-hour series that follows the process of restaurant launches – from conception through menu selection to opening night.

Each half-hour will chronicle one restaurateur from across Canada as he/she prepares to launch a new restaurant.

The pilot, for example, followed the process of launching Toronto’s trendiest new hot spot Rain. Other episodes will see the development and launch of Cube, the hottest new spot in Old Montreal, as well as a new French bistro on College Street in Toronto.

The series, directed and produced by Hadley Obodiac, is destined for Life Network, with a second window on Food Network Canada. Red Apple principal Tim O’Brien and Rachel Low are exec producing.

Spinning off from Opening Soon, which is shooting across Canada through fall, is Launching Morimoto, a one-hour doc special for Food (Canada and U.S.).

Like the series, the one-off tells the story of how a new, high-end restaurant is conceived, built, planned and launched, only in this case the focus is on celebrity chef and reigning star of the Iron Chef series Masuharu Morimoto. In collaboration with Stephen Starr, Morimoto is preparing to open his first signature restaurant in Philadelphia Nov. 1.

Obodiac and Low are producing the doc, with O’Brien and Low exec producing.

And speaking of docs, the Toronto house is also in production on The Surgeons, a 13-part, half-hour series on the lives of some world-class Canadian surgeons operating out of Toronto.

In verite style, the doc, destined for Health Network Canada, with a second window on Life, will follow a surgeon’s process from meeting and treating his/her patients to their lives outside of work. ‘Their personalities are fascinating and the operations we have on camera are absolutely startling,’ says co-exec producer O’Brien. ‘Surgeons are like the rock stars of medicine.’

Daniella Batistella is producing the series and Stan Lipsey is co-exec producing.

In April, Red Apple’s Counter Force (The Learning Channel, History Television), a 3 x 1 doc series on the world’s elite counter-terrorist units, won the Special Jury Gold Award for best television series at the 2001 WorldFest Houston International Film Festival.

Priestley sings for the camera

Norstar Filmed Entertainment can’t get enough of Jason Priestley. Last month the 90210 star was enmeshed in the prodco’s psycho-sexual thriller Darkness Falling, this month it’s a musical called Call Me Irresponsible.

Written by Brock Simpson and directed by Wilson Coneybeare, the digital musical is about a raffish fellow who spends his days obsessed with musicals of the ’30s and ’40s. But when he’s pressed by his uncle to get a ‘real job’ at an ad agency, he is forced to sell his soul, which he deals with in some very creative ways.

Budgeted at under $3 million, the film is a Canada/U.K. coproduction between Norstar and partner Rafford Films. Peter Simpson and Allan Scott are producing.

Tanya Allen (The Newsroom) and Ewen Bremner (Trainspotting) are costarring.

The film is shooting Aug. 22 to Oct. 3 at the Landsdowne studios and on location in Toronto.

The Kids in the Hall return to CBC

Same Guys, New Dresses makes its world television premiere on Sept. 15, bringing The Kids in the Hall back to the small screen.

Directed by Kids alumnus Dave Foley, the feature-length doc goes behind the scenes during the 1999/00 North American Reunion Tour of The Kids in the Hall, the first time the troupe worked together in six years and the Kids’ first live performance since the end of the television series.

In between documenting key moments in the tour, such as the rehearsal process, the makeup lesson and myriad crises, Same Guys, New Dresses promises to provide a never-before-seen, honest look at the complex dynamics of the group.

Producers include Susan Cavan, Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, Kevin McDonald and Scott Thompson.

David Himelfarb is exec producer.

Big cast, short film

Fairy Feller Productions has secured a marquee cast for its Al Waxman Calling Card short Fairy Feller.

Starring Rob Morrow (Northern Exposure), Sir Derek Jacobi (Gladiator), Saul Rubinek (The Family Man) and Jackie Burroughs (Lost and Delirious), the film is based on the true story behind the making of the Oxford English dictionary. The drama unfolds as the dictionary’s editor, who is under great pressure from Queen Elizabeth I to complete the long-delayed book, seeks to define the word ‘art.’

The film is Rajiv Maikhuri’s directorial debut. Hanna Tower is the producer, with Amar Singh and Richard Clifford exec producing.

Writers include Medrie McPhee, Harold Crooks and Maikhuri.

Miroslaw Baszak (Picturing Claire) is DOP.

The film shot in Toronto Aug. 22-26 and will be broadcast on Showcase in the coming year.