Inner City Films is going back to South Africa, and has tapped Sudz Sutherland (Love, Sex and Eating the Bones) and Alyson Feltes (Traders) to write 13 scripts for season one of JOZI-H, a high-end medical drama in the works at the Toronto company and copro partner Morula Pictures of Johannesburg for CBC – a project that could signal a new wave of coproductions between that country and Canucks.

South Africa is looking to increase its domestic production and recently installed a new funding system similar to that of Canada, paving the way for increased use of its oft-ignored coproduction treaty.

The series, now half-written, follows daily life at Johannesburg General Hospital, set against the chaotic backdrop of modern-day South Africa, a country still plagued by violent crime and the runaway spread of AIDS and other diseases. ‘South Africa has the veneer of a First World country, but only a very small part of the population benefits from that,’ notes producer Alfons Adetuyi. ‘Everyone else is just trying to survive.’

The real hospital is used to train doctors from all over the world and specializes in treating violent injuries. Inner City has had good luck with South Africa before, having copro’d its well-received series Ekhaya: A Family Chronicle there in the mid-’90s, shortly after the Canada/South Africa copro treaty was first signed.

The series is expected to shoot there next summer, with most of the above-the-line crew coming from Canada. Inner City is courting directors here and hopes to sign other crew shortly. Adetuyi produces with his brother Amos Adetuyi and Morula’s Mfundi Vundla. Vundla also produces the highly rated S.A. soap Generations and exec produced John Boorman’s latest, Country of My Skull, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Juliette Binoche. He is also working on the JOZI-H scripts, along with Karen Briner and story editor Ken Chubb (Flower & Garnet). The series will post in Canada. No South African broadcasters are attached yet.

Inner City and Morula are taking advantage of the country’s new line of tax credits, introduced in July, which offer 20% to 25% breaks for domestic and copro’d projects. South Africa is looking to create more original content – in particular since its once-hectic service commercial sector has been hurt by a stronger rand (trading at around $0.15 against the U.S. dollar, three times its 1994 value) and high at-home prices. Its Department of Trade and Industry and its funding agencies, the National Film and Video Fund and the Industry Development Corporation, modeled their new system on what they saw in Canada.

‘They looked at Canada and said ‘How can we have an advantage? How can we do just a little bit better than the Canadians?” Adetuyi explains. This makes dealing with South Africa easier for Canuck producers – who have until recently ignored the decade-old copro treaty – because the systems are so similar. The country is also blessed with diverse terrains, cooperative weather and a new megastudio in its legislative capital of Cape Town.

South Africa is also hosting the CHUM-backed sci-fi series Charlie Jade and was used for much of the CBC miniseries Human Cargo.

Inner City is also making another 26 half-hours of its plastic surgery series Skin Deep for Life Network, Oxygen, Discovery Health and Canal Vie, and is developing a one-hour drama series for CTV about Toronto’s nightclub district, The Spot, written and created by rookies Noel Hilton (a former bouncer who has been shot twice) and Michael Foster.

The company also has an MOW deal with Toronto 1 called Front Page, and recently handed in the script by Robert Adetuyi, another brother and writer/director of New Line’s Turn it Up in 2000.