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SOME AMERICAN SHOWS HAVE THAT 'MADE in CANADA' LOOK
of TheColumnists.com
TORONTO, CANADA
Watching CBS’s
new police series "Flashpoint" is a case of deja-viewing.
Once again Canadian producers are trying to peddle their product
to American networks and once again I’m noticing those annoying
but tell-tale signs of a hybrid production.
Veteran Washington Post TV scribe Tom Shales caught on
right away in his lukewarm review of "Flashpoint,"
cautioning his readers, “It’s just supposed to be Anytown
USA”
Me? I’m looking out for Toronto’s tell-tale streetcar
tracks and those Canada Post mailboxes.
CTV, which currently runs the series in Canada, couldn’t
help but be ecstatic it had sold the 13-week series to the U.S.
After all, this is the first major sale to a primetime American
web since CTV’s "Due South" way back in 1994.
It’s been a long drought, folks. For years Canadian producers
worried "Due South" was an anomaly. The series about
a Mountie (Paul Gross), his husky named after a former prime
minister (Diefenbaker) and an FBI sidekick (Callum Keith Rennie)
was shot in Toronto facilities but was supposed to take place
in Chicago.
But "Due South" was only the latest manifestation of
a desperate attempt to get onto American TV. It really started
in earnest with 1985’s "Night Heat," a documentary
-like depiction of urban cops operating in a big city environment
largely at night.
Imported to headline the series was expatriate Canadian actor
Scott Hylands, thus satisfying U.S. needs for a name star, however
minor.
Hylands was a pretty strong actor and the supporting cast included
Jeff Wincott, Allan Royal and Clark Johnson. Wincott wound up
in American kung fu movie adventures while Royal went to Los
Angeles for the series "Falcon Crest" and Johnson wound
up on the series "Homicide."
The producers took the title seriously–to hang out on this
set I had to stay up all night. Standing sets were on the grounds
of an antiquated insane asylum. The show was a staple of CBS
late nights before the network enticed Letterman over from NBC.
A companion series of sorts was "Adderly" about an
American spy assigned to the dead end Miscellaneous Affairs.
Like NBC’s top-rated "Hill Street Blues," "Night
Heat" never mentioned its actual location. It could have
been Anytown, USA. Except that Toronto landmarks like the Sky
Dome or City Hall kept getting in the way. But, hey, an industry
has to start somewhere.
For the next decade or so Toronto and Vancouver became favorite
stomping grounds for American producers. In those days the lowly
Canadian dollar, known as the “loonie” to Canadians,
was running as low as 60 American cents. Producers could get
a real bang for their bucks by trekking northwards, especially
to shoot miniseries and TV movies. With prime time series it
was a harder sell--U.S. network heads wanted to be in complete
creative control, which was difficult if a series was being shot
thousands of miles away.
In one of those years I counted over 90 U.S. runaway productions
shooting in Toronto and Vancouver. Producers would shoot using
a Canadian company, Canadian actors (save for the top line stars)
and a local production crew and tap into the very generous tax
relief plans offered by the various Canadian provincial governments.
Producer Barney Rosenzweig so enjoyed making the pilot of "Cagney
and Lacey" in Toronto, he even thought about making the
series here. (CBS said "no.") After shooting "Due
South" there, producer Paul Haggis said he’d shoot
his next U.S. series in Toronto, too. (CBS forced him to shoot
in L.A., though, and "EZ Streets" only lasted nine
episodes). "Night Heat"’s producer even groused
he had to use fake prop garbage to dirty up the streets a bit.
After spreading out garbage one night the crew took their tea
break only to come back and find the Sanitation Department had
recleaned the street.
When I was on the set of the miniseries "I’ll Take
Manhattan" (1987), I teased creator Judith Krantz about
the location. Just what part of Manhattan was this supposed to
be? When I suggested the title be changed to "I’ll
Take Toronto." she laughed a bit. In TV’s recreation
of New York everything was freshly scrubbed. The cabbies never
hollered at people, the population seemed ethnically cleansed
with few visible minorities.
In those days Toronto was standing in for practically anywhere
in the world. The Siberian Gulag? It was recreated on the Leslie
spit one frosty winter for the miniseries "Kane and Abel"
starring Sam Neill and Peter Strauss. Russian tanks lined key
downtown streets for scenes in the miniseries "Amerika"
(1987) with Robert Urich. That one was about the Russians taking
over the streets of middle America.
Toronto got all puffed out over the trend. There was talk of
a Hollywood North artistic community coming together. I almost
caught the virus until an American actor--actually it was one
of the kids of "That ‘70s Show" who whispered
menacingly, “We’re not up here because we like the
color of your eyes. We like the color of your money.”
Such prosperity proved all too much for California governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger who ranted against these runaway productions.
But as quickly as it started it all ebbed away.
World class financiers started noticing that the second greatest
oil reserve in the world after Saudi Arabia was located in Canada.
And after a decade of pressure from the World Bank the Canadian
government managed to balance its budget while America racked
up record trade deficits. These days the once lowly Canadian
dollar trades at par with its American counterpart or comes in
a few cents under.
Poof! Many of the new production companies faded. You can see
the empty lots all over Toronto. At the same time U.S. networks
began bailing out of the costly TV movie racket and opting for
low class, low cost reality programming. Instead of expensive
series pilots there now are 12-minute "presentations."
I thought the era of chameleon Canadian series was long over.
Until "Flashpoint" popped up on both CTV and CBS. Now
it seems I was being premature. U.S. Producer John Wells ("ER")
is now pitching an American version of the CBC drama "Intelligence"
to American networks. (The Fox network already has turned him
down.) My network sources from Hollywood say they feel that reality
TV will slowly fade and TV drama is poised to make a comeback.
We could be entering a whole new Golden Age of Hands Across The
Border. Anything the Americans do we can copy. And there’s
the case of "The Listener," another CTV hour drama
(about a paramedic with ESP) which has been bought by NBC for
sometime in the fall.
JIM BAWDEN is a former TV/Movie columnist for The Toronto Star, based in Toronto, Ontario.
©2008 by Jim Bawden. The photo is courtesy of CTV and CBS. This column first posted Aug. 4, 2008.
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