Upstart Red Apple Entertainment, helmed by Tim O’Brien and David Brady, is in production on one of its first series, Singles Court.

Produced in association with ontv, the 65-part mag-style program, being shot in the ontv studios in Hamilton, Ont., is a daily half-hour series that explores real-life situations, issues and dilemmas about singles and their relationships. Actual cases submitted by viewers will be dramatized and resolved by singles expert and series creator/host Angela Segal of pbs’ tv talk show Singles Talk.

The new strip series, which starts airing on ontv Sept. 18, will premier in syndication on stations across the u.s. in January 2001.

Syndication specialist Robert Peyton has been retained by Red Apple to manage the rollout.

Stan Lipsey (Big Life) is directing and producing the series. O’Brien and Brady are exec producing.

Red Apple International is distributing Singles Court worldwide.

Also on the Red Apple slate is the nonfiction series Counter Force, a coproduction with Israeli prodcos Omer and Kol Ha’emet, for History Television (Canada), Canal d (Quebec), The Learning Channel (u.s.) and Telad (Israel).

Tagged as a look inside the world’s elite antiterrorist units, including Delta Force (u.s.), geo (Spain), Kobra (Germany) and the Undercover Israeli Border Guard, the three-part, one-hour series was shot around the world and is currently wrapping in Washington, d.c.

The series was created by Tim Wolochatiuk and Sam Katz.

Although O’Brien and Brady have backgrounds in drama, Red Apple will focus primarily on nonfiction programming.

*CineFocus tracks the luck of celebs

Longtime doc producer CineFocus Canada explores the role of luck in the lives of celebrities, business leaders and athletes in its newest series Lucky Breaks.

The 13 half-hours, produced for a January 2001 broadcast on Star!, started shooting in May at the Banff Television Festival, where Steve Smith (The Red Green Show), Gordon Pinsent and Peter Mansbridge were interviewed, and will continue shooting sporadically until November.

Most recently, the series, written and produced by CineFocus principal Joan Prowse (Beauty and the Beach) and directed by partner John Bessai, headed to the Sunday afternoon bbq at the Canadian Film Centre (during the Toronto International Film Festival) to interview a handful of successful alumni, including John Greyson (Law of Enclosures) and Tricia Fish (New Waterford Girl). Future shoots will feature Norman Jewison, business tycoon Frank Stronach and musician Bruce Cockburn.

In the pilot episode, award-winning writer/director Patricia Rozema (Mansfield Park) relives the moment her first feature film, I Heard the Mermaids Singing, received a six-minute standing ovation at Cannes, and actress Tia Carrere (Relic Hunter) tells how she was discovered while shopping in a grocery store in her native Hawaii.

‘What makes the show so interesting are people’s own interpretations of the role luck has played in their lives,’ says Prowse.

What Lucky Breaks strives for is insightful and personal tales that humanize celebrities, although each episode will also feature an interview with a yet-to-be-known rising star.

The series is budgeted at roughly $500,000.

Manny Danelon (Peter Benchley’s Amazon line producer) is exec producing. Great North International has worldwide distribution and Canadian Learning Television has second window.

Also in production at CineFocus is Visions From the Wilderness: The Art of Paul Kane, a one-hour doc for Bravo! and the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, coproduced and directed by Bessai and written and coproduced by Prowse.

*Melbar finds Hollywood in retirement

Melbar Entertainment Group’s Barry Avrich didn’t think he’d be doing another documentary after he completed his first, Unforgettable: 100 Years Remembered, but then he fell upon the Hollywood Retirement Lodge, a seniors facility in l.a. that houses old-time entertainment people, from Cecil B. DeMille crews to those from the glory days of radio. ‘All of a sudden it was like, god help me, this is another documentary,’ says Avrich, who soon after learned there’s a similar facility in downtown Toronto called the Performing Arts Lodges of Canada.

Entitled Glitter Palace, his newest venture focuses on the people who live in these facilities, their memories of an old Hollywood, their careers and their reflections on the current industry.

Avrich is writing and directing the $150,000 one-off. Nat Brescia (The Madness of Method) is producing and Janson Films in the u.s. is distributing worldwide.

The doc is set to go to camera in l.a. and Toronto in November.

On a higher-budget note, Avrich is in development with Berlin-based Fourfront on a would-be $45-million feature he wrote and pitched at a Variety pitch session in Cannes.

Entitled Gold Train, the Nazi art thriller is about a painting that comes up for auction in New York. When somebody realizes it once belonged to his family, he traces its history to find out it belongs to a highly controversial figure in modern-day society.

The feature will likely become an international coproduction.

Avrich, a screenwriter by trade (Grave Concern), is also a partner in Toronto ad agency Echo Advertising, which handles much of the advertising for the Toronto International Film Festival.

*Gelbart launches lifestyle prodco in T.O.

Arnie Gelbart of Montreal’s Galafilm has joined forces with Toronto-based producer Leanna Crouch (Entertainment Now) and Vancouver-based development guy Jessie Fawcett to launch Toronto’s newest information/lifestyle television production house, TV Factory.

While Gelbart continues to preside over his Montreal operation, which is mainly devoted to the production of non-fiction programming, he serves as partner and exec producer in the new Toronto-based venture.

Crouch is head of production and creative affairs and Fawcett is head of development and sales.

The team will be traveling to mipcom next month to launch one of its first series, Modern Manners.

TV Factory has also developed a new golf series, Cool Links, which has sold to omnipresent ESPN International. Budgeted at roughly us$45,000 per episode, the series caters to what Fawcett calls ‘the Tiger Woods generation of golfers.’

In developing programming for the new company, the team has spent the last year looking at what’s working overseas and figuring out innovative ways to bring home the magnetism and originality of the latest tv trends, says Fawcett. ‘We’re not just going out and buying formatting rights.’

*Shaftesbury brings mystery to kids

Shaftesbury Films has launched its new children’s division, Shaftesbury Kids, with the production of Screech Owls, a 13-part, live-action series for ytv.

Based on the books by Canadian novelist Roy MacGregor and targeted to the nine-12 demo, the series, which seems to stay in line with the murder-mystery theme of Shaftesbury’s adult programming (i.e., its six-part mystery franchise for ctv), follows a small-town, co-ed hockey team that solves mysteries.

Budgeted at roughly $450,000 a half-hour, Screech Owls is produced by Moira Holmes (Ready or Not). Directors include Michael Kennedy (Made in Canada), T.W. Peacocke (Cold Squad) and John May (Our Hero), who cowrote the series with Suzanne Bolch (Our Hero). Shaftesbury Films principal Christina Jennings is exec producing.

The three lead kids are William Greenblatt (Earth: Final Conflict), Jonathan Malen (Kevin’s Castle) and Nicole Hardy (In a Heartbeat).

The series shoots on location in Toronto and at the Downsview studios Sept. 18 to Dec. 14. It is set to air on ytv in February 2001.

Oasis Pictures has worldwide distribution outside Canada.

The new division has a handful of children’s features coming down the pipe.

*Digital opens the door to unknown filmmakers

Circulation City is the first feature film to be produced out of newly created Toronto prodco Definitive Pictures.

Produced by newcomer Miro Oballa and written and directed by Mark Miller, the project, to be shot on digital for under $1 million, ‘is a film in Toronto, about Toronto and shot in the most vibrant part of Toronto,’ says Oballa.

Shooting Sept. 18 to Oct. 14 in the trendy Queen Street West neighborhood, the film focuses on a young artistic couple who are taken on an existential journey that sees them questioning whether to integrate into society.

Shooting on digital, says Oballa, provides the freedom to experiment. ‘Mistakes don’t cost as much.’

Much of the film, which has been privately funded, is improvised.

A distributor has yet to be attached, but Oballa hopes for a theatrical release and intends to premier it in next year’s Toronto International Film Festival. *