After 25 years of producing top-quality Canadian programming – including Da Vinci’s Inquest, Blue Murder, Milgaard, At The End of The Day: The Sue Rodriguez Story, Scorn and Diana Kilmury: Teamster – to say that Barna-Alper Productions president Laszlo Barna has won the respect of his peers is an understatement.

For instance, while Barna says Trina McQueen gave him his first big break by putting magazine series WorkWeek on CBC in 1988, McQueen considers herself the lucky one.

‘Actually, I’ve given him several ‘big breaks’ over the years,’ says McQueen, former VP of CBC television news, current affairs and Newsworld and retired president/ COO of CTV. ‘All of them were nicely justified because Laszlo always made me look good!’

‘Laszlo Barna is an ongoing force within the CBC because his work stands for remarkable quality with a real sense of social responsibility,’ says Slawko Klymkiw, CBC’s executive director of network programming. ‘He also has a deft sense of humor. Laszlo is one of those people who takes the issues seriously, but doesn’t take himself seriously.’

‘He’s a mensch!’ says Steve Lucas of Toronto’s North Bend Film Company, who created, and then coproduced, the cop drama series Blue Murder with Barna-Alper. ‘I wish there were a dozen other people out there like Laszlo Barna, and a dozen other independent production companies like Barna-Alper.’

And what of the oft-repeated mantra that Canadian TV drama is dying?

Despite the fact that domestic dramatic hours on Canadian television are down and one-time production powerhouses including Alliance Atlantis have effectively withdrawn from this market, Barna-Alper remains committed to Canadian drama.

The proof: besides CBC’s Da Vinci’s Inquest (produced with Haddock Entertainment of Vancouver) – the five-time Gemini winner for best drama series – Barna-Alper is currently producing the second season of Showcase comedy series Show Me Yours, coproducing the CBC African aid-worker miniseries Whiskey Echo with the U.K.’s Little Bird Film, and recently wrapped CBC MOW Shania, detailing the rags-to-riches success of pop star Shania Twain.

Meanwhile, The Movie Network will soon be airing comedy series G-Spot, which Barna-Alper is producing for Toronto’s Serendipity Point Films. The prodco also just saw MOW Choice: The Henry Morgentaler Story – a chronicle of the abortion rights pioneer, coproduced with Montreal’s Park Ex Pictures – go to air on CTV. Add in Discovery Channel’s Frontiers of Construction and History Television’s Turning Points of History, both long-running doc series, and one thing is clear – Laszlo Barna remains as committed to Canadian TV today as he was 25 years ago.

‘It’s the ideas that keep me in the game,’ Barna tells Playback. ‘I’ve always been seduced and very susceptible to ideas. Besides, it’s a great privilege and an obligation to fight for the ideas that people walk in with. That’s what keeps me working as a producer.’

It is this same sense of obligation that motivates Barna to fight on behalf of the entire Canadian production industry as chair of the CFTPA.

It was frustration with ‘lining up cap in hand at the Canada Council’ for funding to produce theater and a desire to control his own destiny that persuaded Barna to become a TV producer in the late 1970s. Besides wanting to dig up financing on his own terms, the idea of moving from theater to film appealed to him: ‘I’ve always had a thing for sprockets,’ Barna quips.

To deal constructively with this sprocket obsession, Barna founded Barna-Alper Productions with his wife Laura Alper in 1980. For the next decade the couple represented Barna-Alper’s only full-time employees.

McQueen believes Alper – a lawyer by trade – has been a strong influence in the company’s interest in issues of social justice.

Indeed, it is a theme, particularly as applied to the working classes, that Barna-Alper has returned to again and again, from a series of early labor-related industrial films to numerous documentaries and ultimately into the world of drama with Diana Kilmury: Teamster, which Barna-Alper produced in 1995.

The B.C.-set MOW was based on the true story of Diana Kilmury, who ‘helped clean up the Teamsters, got rid of the last vestiges of the mob in the Teamsters and suddenly got elected as the vice-president of the Teamsters,’ he says. ‘That suckered me back into the grease paint, makeup, the darkened rooms, and everything I had left behind in the theater.’

Barna’s eye for quality programming, armed with his savvy in raising money and lining up international coproduction partners, helped build Barna-Alper into the world-class independent production house it is today. Throughout the years, Barna has never lost his feel for stories that capture the essence of the human struggle.

One critical component of Barna-Alper’s recent successes is Julie Lacey, head of drama development. A winner of the Gemini for best writing in a dramatic series (Power Play), and with 15 years’ writing/editing credits on shows such as Due South, The Zack Files and Power Play, Lacey shepherds Barna-Alper’s new projects from development to production.

‘Laszlo is so accustomed to working with others, that collaborating with him comes naturally,’ says Lacey. ‘He’s also really interested in doing the kinds of stories I’m interested in, so we’ve got a really good fit creatively.’

Besides his knack for spotting stories and talent, Barna is also adept at tailoring TV shows to meet a broadcaster’s specific audience needs. ‘Laszlo not only has good ideas but he knows how to listen,’ says McQueen. ‘When you’re a broadcaster trying to establish a specific style service – as was the case at Discovery Channel when I was at CTV – you need a producer who understands not just the programs he wants to do, but the programs that the broadcaster needs to have done.’

After 25 years in Canadian production, Barna’s greatest achievement may just be the fact that he’s still in the game. ‘Laszlo is a rare, rare breed right now,’ says Klymkiw. ‘He’s an independent producer who’s managing to exist.’

However, Barna himself is not one to waste time musing on mere survival. He remains consumed by the stories he wants to see told. ‘That’s why I’m still in the game, 25 years on,’ he says.