BANFF -- It's a good thing that guest of honor Steven Bochco got a nice, little statuette all his own, because two of his shows were shut out at the Banff Television Festival Rockie Awards last night.
Maybe the biggest surprise of the night was that not only did Due South beat Bochco's Murder One and NYPD Blue for best continuing series, it triumphed over TV's No. 1 show, ER, too. Bochco, whose resume also includes creating and producing Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, was honored with the Rockie award of excellence for his career in television.
The obvious irony is that the Toronto-based Alliance's Due South may be collecting major awards, but it wasn't on the recently released fall schedules of either CBS or CTV.
Due South star Paul Gross hosted the 17th annual Rockies, which awarded the best of the festival and miniseries prizes to the BBC/A&E co-production, Pride and Prejudice.
Frasier set a Rockie record for winning the best comedy award for the third straight year.
The only other Canadian show to take home a Rockie was Rhombus Media's Dido and Aeneas, which won in the best performance special category.
Other major winners: Blacklist - Hollywood on Trial (U.S., best arts documentary); Frontline Hospital (The Netherlands, best information program); Gaston and the Truffle Hunters (France, best children's program); Gogs (U.K., animation); Lost Children (Germany, made-for-TV movie) and Return to the Dying Rooms (U.K., social and political documentary).
Michael Moore's TV Nation won a special jury prize, while the Canadian co-production Hiroshima was given a Telefilm prize.