Vancouver: Fans of The West Wing may lament the change of creative management at the hit White House series with the departure of creator Aaron Sorkin next season. But no similar quality-control hand-wringing needs to happen for fans of CBC’s Da Vinci’s Inquest after creator Chris Haddock’s landmark deal to produce The Handler for CBS next fall.

Most of the 13 one-hour scripts for season six of the Vancouver-based coroner series are written and Haddock expects to commute between Vancouver and Los Angeles to oversee both shows, though production schedules are not yet set.

‘We’ll have the same producers, writers and cast,’ says Haddock, referring to Da Vinci’s Inquest.

Meanwhile, Haddock’s sale of The Handler to CBS parent Viacom may be the first direct sale of a primetime series to a U.S. network by a Canadian still living in Canada – making Haddock Canada’s preeminent showrunner.

Comparisons to prolific U.S. producers such as Sorkin, Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley are inevitable and, in some ways, accurate, says Haddock. He has modeled his career after Bochco, creator of Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue and other successful series, in working to leverage one solid production to get another.

On the strength of Da Vinci’s Inquest, Haddock was able to meet CBS programmers last August, which earned him a ‘blind commitment’ from the U.S. network to do some business. He ended up pitching four ideas, with The Handler, the story of an FBI agent in charge of training and supervising undercover operatives, being the winning concept. The pilot, starring Joe Pantoliano (The Sopranos), was shot in L.A. in February and will air as the first episode when the series debuts this fall on Fridays at 10 p.m. after JAG.

The first season order of 13 episodes has an option for an additional ‘back nine’ if the show picks up an audience, says Haddock, who owns ‘only a tiny bit’ of The Handler.

In developing The Handler, Haddock was struck with how FBI sting operations run like television production, with story development, agent casting and production all part of the process. Originally, Haddock says he designed the series for production in Vancouver (as a stand-in for San Francisco). However, CBS programmers wanted the show produced and set in L.A.

Previously, Haddock wrote for the U.S. series MacGyver.