Galafilm of Montreal and Toronto’s Back Alley Films wrapped principal photography late last fall after 32 days on the initial eight half-hours of the highly charged erotic anthology Bliss, a Gemini hopeful in the best dramatic series category.

An official Quebec/Ontario coproduction developed as a Showcase Original Series, Bliss is billed as the first TV drama to explore the lives, passions and fantasies of women exclusively from a female perspective. The series premiered this past spring on pay-TV networks The Movie Network, Movie Central and Super Ecran and will also air on French specialty channel Series+.

Bliss is sold by exporter Oasis International of Toronto. Eight new episodes were ordered this season and are currently in production on location in Montreal. U.S. specialty service Oxygen has licensed both the first and second seasons. The producers are now hoping for a breakthrough with a sale to a U.K. broadcaster at this fall’s MIPCOM.

‘Showcase was in at the initial stage of development. They were the first to come in and have been very involved creatively with this project,’ says Janis Lundman, who cocreated the show and is exec producing with Back Alley partner Adrienne Mitchell (Drop the Beat, Talk 16) and Galafilm producer Arnie Gelbart. Galafilm’s Ian Whitehead produces.

Eighty percent of Bliss’ budget has been spent on the Quebec side. The anthology’s producing, writing and performance talent originates from Ontario, Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. Season one directors include Mitchell, Penelope Buitenhuis, Sylvie Rosenthal, Holly Dale and Lynne Stopkewich. Screenwriters included Sharon Riis and exec story editor Laurie Finstad.

The producers also optioned short stories by Carol Lazare and Susan Musgrave, says Lundman.

Two episodes of the anthology are entered in official competition at next month’s Festival Tout Ecran in Geneva, Switzerland.

Bliss was shot in DV PAL format by DOP Stevan Ivanov. Investors in the $4.1-million coproduction include Telefilm Canada and the CTF Licence Fee Program.

Galafilm manages a diversified production slate, which can vary from children’s series to TV drama, feature films, documentaries and doc series as well as other strands of factual programming, including observational docs and docusoaps. The prodco is also up for a best biography documentary program Gemini for Ted Allan: Minstrel Boy of the 20th Century.

‘If we are non-diversified within the production industry we will not be able to sustain a company that needs [sufficient] infrastructure and specialized dedicated producers,’ says Gelbart. ‘Because of the complexity of the system you need to have enough [production] volume, and we want to be diversified so that if [demand in] one category declines, there are alternatives.’

Ted Allan tells the story of the late Montreal writer best known for The Scalpel and the Sword, a bio on Dr. Norman Bethune, and the Oscar-nominated script for Lies My Father Told Me. The film features rare footage of Allan performing his life story in a one-man show, archival materials, including Allan’s own films, and the personal reminiscences of his children and his friends Edna O’Brien, Stanley Mann, Ted Kotcheff and Gena Rowlands.

The doc is directed by Merrily Weisbord, who also wrote, and Tanya Ballantyne Tree. It was coproduced with the Documentary East studio of the National Film Board on a budget of $410,000 and licensed by History Television, Bravo! and CFCF-TV, the CTV affiliate in Montreal.