Just weeks into her new job as president and CEO at the Canadian Television Fund, Sandra Macdonald has inherited a growing organization that is being buffeted by external industry changes that are affecting drama and documentary investment.
As evidenced in the CTF’s annual report for fiscal 2002 (ended March 31), released this month, documentaries are surging, while drama volume is waning. For instance, in fiscal 1998, drama hours trailed documentaries by 36%. In fiscal 2002, documentaries generated 1,121 hours, nearly double drama’s 624 hours.
The impact of the recently licensed specialties and their need for information programming, along with the difficulties in developing and financing drama, accounts for the ‘differentiation’ in demand, says Macdonald, adding that, as a reflection of the current industry, there is little the CTF can do about how its $241 million is dispersed.

Da Vinci’s Inquest leads all dramatic programs with 10 nominations for the 2002 Gemini Awards. The Vancouver-shot crime series, entering its fifth season, is nominated for a total of 10 trophies, including best dramatic series. The program, produced by Haddock Entertainment and Barna-Alper Productions and broadcast on CBC, has taken that prize in each of the last three years.
The challengers aiming to unseat Da Vinci’s in the dramatic series category include: rival Vancouver cop series Cold Squad, with nine noms; the Showcase Original Series Bliss, an erotic women’s anthology from Montreal’s Galafilm and Toronto’s Back Alley Films; Dice, a small-town thriller series coproduced by Montreal’s Cite-Amerique and the U.K.’s Box TV; and Foreign Objects, a series of six half-hours from Rhombus Media about a documentary director, written, helmed by and starring Ken Finkleman. The last three productions chime in with two noms apiece.

The success of Da Vinci’s Inquest, highlighted by a drama-series-leading 10 Gemini nominations, has the show’s creative team thinking big. Like big screen.
Show creator/executive producer/writer/director Chris Haddock has been hatching the idea for a Da Vinci’s feature with lead actor Nicholas Campbell and head writer Alan DiFiore since the Vancouver-shot crime series’ early days. Haddock expects that in addition to at least a couple more seasons on the small screen, the adventures of coroner Dominic Da Vinci, played by Gemini Award winner Campbell, will be coming soon to a multiplex near you. DiFiore expects the movie may go into production as early as next year.

TVA Films will distribute three pictures by three of Canada’s top filmmakers next year, bringing new works by Guy Maddin, Francois Girard and Don McKellar to screens with a heavy P&A push. The Montreal distributor acquired all Canadian rights to all three films – with total budgets of roughly $17 million – from Toronto’s Rhombus Media and announced the details at a press conference on Sept. 12.

With the number of Canadian dramas dwindling, producers who manage simply to keep their series on the air face good odds to get Gemini nominations. And so the nominees for the 2002 awards, announced Sept. 24 at simultaneous press conferences in Toronto and Vancouver, include many familiar faces.

The central message of the 2001/02 Canadian Television Fund annual report should be news to no one: documentaries are waxing, dramas are waning.

Canada soft on signal theft

Asked what was the best Canadian feature film they saw at the Toronto International Film Festival, 27% of poll respondents voted for Spider, followed by 16% for Bollywood/Hollywood, 9% for Flower & Garnet, 6% for Long Life, Prosperity and Happiness, and 3% each for Ararat and The Wild Dogs. The remaining 36% favored films that did not appear among the selections.

The Thom Fitzgerald movie The Wild Dogs received production funding from The Harold Greenberg Fund, but that was not mentioned in the film’s Sept. 2 film diary.

THE new fall television season brings a healthy influx of Hollywood crime series that are being praised for pushing the boundaries of TV drama. According to advance reviews, shows such as The Shield, Boomtown, CSI: Miami and Robbery Homicide Division are breaking ground with more complex characters and unconventional story structures. So how does a venerable Canadian program such as Da Vinci’s Inquest, leading all dramas with 10 Gemini nominations including best dramatic series, keep up with this raised bar?

As if Ken Finkleman wasn’t busy enough, the writer/director/producer/actor will again have to find time in his jam-packed daytimer to sit in on this year’s Gemini Awards – where his most recent project, the six-part limited series Foreign Objects, is in the running for best dramatic series.

The real prize in Canadian drama production is not a Gemini Award or even a nomination – it’s keeping your series on the air. This has long been the case, but with the collapse of the international marketplace, increasingly fragmented audiences and the rise of reality TV, the odds against have become even greater. And that’s what makes Keatley MacLeod/Alliance Atlantis’ Cold Squad, nominated for nine Geminis for season five on CTV, a true champ.