The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 46

ENTERTAINMENT CIO The Weekend Sun, Saturday. February 8. 1997 FECAN from page C4 CIVT will earn its niche, Fecan vows maybe with issue-based drama "If we're going to protect ourselves from the generic, universal culture that is constantly being fed to us through satellites and everything else, then we need something on our own TV channels that we can recognize as our own, that reminds us who we are and what we're about. Otherwise, what's the point? We might as well just throw up our hands and surrender to this bland, homogeneous, mass culture we're surrounded by." Access to Vancouver's thriving television-advertising markets means Baton will be able to finance productions through independent producers that can then be shown across the country. Baton is committed to commissioning two new Canadian drama series from independent producers, as well as 20 half-hour dramas by new independent film-makers and a series of family dramas, mostly from B.C.

producers. Additionally, Baton has committed to Fecan already has a strong sense of where he wants CIVT to be several years down the road. Baton's winning bid stressed the importance of homegrown drama in bolstering Canadian cultural identity and Fecan who shepherded to life Road toAvonka, North of 60, Northwood, The Odyssey, Mom P.I. Max Glick, Street Legal, Degrassi Junior Canadian Air Farce, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and the long-form dramas Boys of St. Vincent, Liar, Liar, Little Criminals and Million Dollar Babies believes quality B.C.-based drama is the key to distinguishing CIVTs voice among the 50 or so channels already available to Lower Mainland viewers.

"There are only two things that can make you distinctive, Fecan says. "One is your programming and the other is your advertising for that programming. Your advertising can be distinctive, but if it's not true to the programming it's short term." Issue-based drama is expensive, time-consuming and labor intensive. It is also, Fecan believes, the key to Baton's future, and possibly the key to the future of Canadian broadcasting. 'Television is as much about emotion as it is about fact, sometimes even more so.

There are stories you can tell through drama that you'd never be able tell through news or in a documentary," he says. Dramatic series are the cornerstone of the production industry, the steadiest sources of employment and creative apprenticeship for highly skilled workers. Each hour of TV drama generates 80-100 person-months of employment, as well as numerous economic side-benefits. Furthermore, Fecan insists, quality drama provides viewers with touchstones they remember long after first viewing. spending at least 35 per cent of its total advertising revenues on Canadian programming, over the five-year term of its licence.

"We need a national infrastructure to pay for drama that's not possible to pay for with only half the country," Fecan says. "This piece of the puzzle in Vancouver means we'll be able to springboard a lot of other projects that we think are not only going to be good not only for B.C. but for our entire system." Fecan is enough of a realist to know that Baton, with or without CIVT, will never rival communications giants like ABC, CBS or NBC. But the green light for CIVT has gone a long way toward ensuring Baton remains in the picture. "We'll have to find our own niche," Fecan says.

"But we think, based on talking to people, that there is room for us to that. We're in this for the long haul." Fecan says, "The important thing is to deliver on what we promised." Some of the finer details have already been worked out. The station will hire 108 people, andl03 of those jobs will be full-time. The transmitter will be on Mt. Seymour.

The station has been assigned channel 42 by the CRTC, but Rogers Cable will probably assign it a lower channel, most likely channel 22. It will not displace any existing channel. The station will be entirely digital, and while the studio site hasn't been decided, Fecan hasn't ruled out a Moses ZnaimerCITY-TV-style storefront studio for downtown Vancouver. Fecan was instrumental in developing CITY'S CityPulse News on Toronto's Queen Street West, and it's something he believes will work for Vancouver. "I don't know that a fortress out in the suburbs is the way we want to go, even though it might be technically easier." Mirren takes another final bow and it's a winner TONYATHERTON which he indulges with the help of his pet Rottweilers.

But while Tennison is chasing down information on The Street, he is launching his own murder investigation, because the victim was a key man in his drug operation. The Street's interrogation techniques prove more effective than those of the police and he comes up with the surprising truth enough in advance of the authorities to exact his own twisted revenge. All of which intensifies Tennison's desire to bring him down. But things are becoming complicated. The snitch the police have within The Street's camp has always been unstable, but he loses all control when he learns that The Street is on to him.

Meanwhile Tennison is coming to the conclusion that there may be more mere luck to The Street's reputation as a Teflon man. Reportedly, Mirren was lured back for this Prime Suspect because its theme of youth and violence appealed to her social consciousness. But, as in past Prime Suspects, the social commentary is neither blatant nor does it impede the mystery. Rather, it is woven into the fabric of the plot very skilfully. Ottawa Citixn reputation has preceded her.

The errors in judgment referred to in the tide are, in at least the first half of the mini-series, almost entirely Tennison's. Insecurity leads her to browbeat her new investigative staff, undermining her authority. She responds emotionally to the plight of the kids drawn into the complex web of drugs and violence that color the escalating murder case she's assigned. That causes her to lead with her chin, compromising her safety and her investigation. Even more foolishly, she responds to the flattering attentions of her married boss, DCS Ballinger (John McArdle), an indulges in an impossible affair that makes office life uncomfortable.

But she makes no mistake when, despite the objections of her staff, she identifies a slimy sociopath known as The Street (Steven Mackintosh) as her chief target, although he has no clear connection to the gangland-style murder under investigation. The Street is a kind of inner-city folk hero, a drug lord whose sneering bravado and uncanny ability to avoid criminal implication has made him the object of awe as well as fear. He is a seemingly omniscient bad guy with greasy hair, disheveled clothes and a sadistic streak Soulham Newspapers According to Helen Mirren, every year will be the last for Jane Ten-nison, the detective superintendent around whom personal and societal chaos swirls in the British series, Prime Suspect. Last season's mini-series seemed like the perfect place to pull the plug. It had a riveting storyline that was related to the first Prime Suspect case, it elaborated richly on old themes, and it finally won for Mirren the Best Actress Emmy she so richly deserved.

But even before that instalment had been broadcast on PBS, Mirren had already signed up to do just one more. The "final final" Prime Suspect, subtitled Errors of Judgment, airs in two, two-hour instalments for the next two Sundays at 9 on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre. The odd thing is that this "final" Prime Suspect seems more like a new beginning. Tennison isn't with London's Metropolitan police force anymore. She has been transferred to Manchester, away from old relationships of various kinds, and in with a new lot of police officers who sport a different regional dialect and a certain ambivalence about their new guv whose i ng Presents STARTS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14TH AT A THEATRE NEAR YOU! 7 vac.

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