Source : Globe & Mail

Cops will be chasing robbers and medics will be saving lives across North American television screens in 2009. What's new is that these dramas will unfold not only in New York and Los Angeles but also on the mean streets of Toronto.

Canadian TV drama has taken a beating in the past decade as broadcasters turned toward reality shows, which are cheaper to make, popular with audiences and - since a change in government regulations in 1999 - count toward Canadian-content credits. These days, however, there are signs the one-hour drama may be poised for a comeback, thanks in part to co-productions with American networks showing a willingness to air programs not set in the United States.

CTV picked up a second new drama for 2009 last month: the police show The Bridge. Previously, it had announced The Listener, a drama about a telepathic paramedic emphatically set in Toronto - which will also be seen on NBC. Meanwhile, CanWest has announced it is commissioning pilots for five potential series to run on Global and Showcase, a slate that includes two crime shows as well as dramas about a used-car dealer, a troubled addiction counsellor, and an alien. Also, industry sources say the network is set to announce a new police drama for 2009 entitled Copper.

"There's a definite move," says Christina Jennings, chairman of Shaftesbury Films. "Three years ago, CTV, CBC and Global were nowhere compared to pay television." Previously, Shaftesbury has produced dramas such as ReGenesis for specialty channels like Showcase. Today, it is shooting The Listener for CTV and NBC.

In part, the flurry of press releases has to do with politics. Both private broadcasters will appear before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in April to get their licences renewed; both CTV and CanWest must spend on Canadian content some of the millions in "tangible benefits" they promised the CRTC last year, when CTV was allowed to acquire CHUM, and CanWest was allowed to acquire Alliance-Atlantis (which also owned Showcase.) While the networks are expected to look for concessions on Cancon requirements because ad revenues are now down, they cannot be seen to be flouting those previous agreements.

"Without getting too cynical about it, you are getting into licence-renewal time. They want to look as good as they can in front of the commission," says Guy Mayson, president of the Canadian Film and Television Producers Association.Although they continue to spend hundreds of millions on U.S. shows, the broadcasters were already bemoaning fragmented audiences and competition from the Internet last spring. That's when they asked the CRTC to order cable providers to start paying them for their signals, a quest they lost. Now they are facing a recession. However, since U.S. networks face similar problems, the Canadian networks have also seen opportunities emerge for co-productions, opportunities hastened by last year's strike by U.S. TV writers.

"It's one of those situations where necessity is the mother of invention," says Bill Mustos, producer of Flashpoint, the Toronto SWAT-team show that aired on CTV and CBS last summer, and which will return to both networks in January. "We came along with Flashpoint just when the big networks concluded they needed a new model."

He says CBS executives had been "kicking the tires" on various SWAT concepts for several years but, because Mustos had just signed on with CTV for a show based on the tactics of Toronto's actual emergency-response unit, they were now forced to decide if they wanted a show not set in the U.S. "There was this moment's hesitation in the room," he says, "and then a decision that it would probably be interesting."

Mustos and Jennings agree the writers' strike opened a door, but they think these recent co-production deals, led off by the CBC when it signed with Irish, British and U.S. partners to create the steamy historic drama The Tudors, were on the way anyway.

Such deals are not without their critics, who worry Canadians will begin to surrender creative control on putative Canadian content. "The Tudors is a Canadian/Irish co-pro, but it is purely a British story with very little Canadian talent," notes Maureen Parker, executive director of the Writers Guild of Canada. "...The American studios will want to control the creative process and content: Flashpoint has been an exception, but let's see if it holds."

In that series, where the Eaton Centre and Toronto's ravines played starring roles, and in The Listener, the shows are clearly set in contemporary Toronto. "I promised them: You will never see Toronto looking as beautiful as it will in our pilot, because you have only seen Toronto sitting in for some generic U.S. city," Jennings says of her negotiations with NBC over The Listener.

Still, both Mustos and Jennings are cautious about declaring the new co-production model a slam dunk before it has been tested by U.S. audiences. "These are still very early days ... to get excited about the dawning of a new era," says Mustos. Flashpoint did well with American audiences in the summertime. However, Mustos sees a much more serious test of their willingness to embrace Toronto coming in January, when Flashpoint has been given a less-than-prime spot - Friday night - at a time of year when there is a lot more competition for eyeballs from top U.S. shows.

While the U.S. belatedly turns to the co-production model with which Canadians and Europeans have always been familiar, Canadian broadcasters are belatedly borrowing the practice of shooting pilots before they give series the go-ahead, and this also explains some of the new activity. Previously, Canadian broadcasters had argued that pilots were too expensive, and simply green-lit shows based on scripts, but changes at the Canadian Television Fund, which helps underwrite most productions, have made pilots more common. The Listener and Flashpoint were two of four pilots that CTV shot last year, and Mustos reports Flashpoint's narrative structure was significantly reworked after the two networks saw the pilot.

CanWest has just started the process, testing content for its newly enlarged stable with its five pilots. "Come February, we have incredibly tough choices to make," says Christine Shipton, a senior vice-president at CanWest: She expects to take only three shows, one on Global and two on Showcase.

Piloting also has its critics, however: Producers who have assembled a creative team are left waiting on a decision about whether they need to keep it together, a decision that may come very slowly in a time of economic uncertainty. Meanwhile, because public money has been spent, the broadcasters cannot simply throw the pilots away: Unsuccessful pilots appear on air as one-offs that may mystify the viewer.

That said, producers and broadcasters do think Canadian audiences are warming to Canadian drama. "We are showing Canadian dramas to their best, and they are gaining some ground," says Kirstine Layfield, executive director of network programming at the CBC, where the police show The Border, for example, has increased its audience by 7 per cent this season, its second.

"Ten years ago, Canadians would turn their noses up at Canadian wine," Jennings agrees hopefully. "They don't do that any more."

*****

IN THE HOPPER

Coming to the CBC

in January

Wild Roses: a prime-time Albertan soap in which a feisty female ranching family fights off the advances of the oil industry.

Being Erica: a comic drama about a screwed-up Toronto thirtysomething who gets to return to her past and fix her mistakes thanks to a mysterious therapist.

In production for CTV for 2009

The Listener: a Toronto paramedic is plagued by the ability to hear the thoughts of others.

The Bridge: a cop show with a grunt's-eye view based on the experiences of Toronto police union leader Craig Bromell.

Pilots ordered for Global or Showcase for 2009-10

Clean: brilliant addiction counsellor teeters on edge of addiction.

Lawyers, Guns & Money: young claims adjuster uncovers insurance fraud in Hamilton.

Lost Girl: supernatural being raised by humans must save the world.

Shattered: cop with multiple personalities uses them to solve crimes.

The Dealership: daughter takes over dad's used-car business.

© Globe and Mail