Back Alley Film Productions is graduating from teenage, hip-hop programming to female sexuality with the development of Exposed, a new 13-part, half-hour, dramatic anthology series based on erotic fiction written by women.

‘It challenges the stereotypes attached to women’s sexuality,’ says coproducer Adrienne Mitchell. ‘It takes women out of the victim position and shows them as empowered.’

One segment, for example, demystifies women’s role in infidelity, highlighting the empowerment women can derive from forming their own extramarital relationships.

Budgeted at close to $7.2 million, the series is a coproduction with Galafilm in Montreal and will be shot there in late September.

Series creators and Back Alley principals Mitchell and Janis Lundman are producing the show for Showcase, TMN-The Movie Network, Super Ecran, Superchannel and Series+.

Directors have yet to be signed, but Mitchell says the producers are talking to some of the biggest female names in the Canadian industry.

Lynne Stopkewich, Anne Wheeler, Lea Pool, Patricia Rozema, perhaps?

Maureen McKeon, Tamara Griffith and Sheila Prescott were on board for the first three scripts, but McKeon, who was originally attached as story editor, is committed to The Associates and series writers have yet to be named.

The producers are still in discussion with Canadian and international distributors.

Mitchell assures that since Back Alley has become so well versed in the multimedia arena, the series will definitely come equipped with interactive components.

Mitchell, Lundman and Galafilm’s Arnie Gelbart are exec producing.

Another stab at female erotica comes in the form of the feature film Arousal. Set to be Mitchell’s dramatic feature directorial debut, as well as Back Alley’s first dramatic feature, the film is based on Barbara Gowdy’s short story 93 Million Miles Away, cut from the same anthology Stopkewich’s Kissed was based on.

Adapted by Carolyn Mamchur and Lucie Page, Arousal tells the story of a woman who discovers she’s an exhibitionist.

Budgeted at roughly $3 million, Mitchell and Lundman will produce, with Ralph Zimmerman serving as exec producer.

Citytv is on board for development.

Mitchell says once the scripts are completed, which should be by July, the producers will be actively looking for official coproduction partners.

Meantime, the CBC recently dropped Drop the Beat from its sked. While the series has a life internationally, as it’s been sold to France, the U.K., Israel, the Netherlands and Norway, unless the producers find another Canadian broadcaster it will not be heading into a new season.

Jay hits it again with Lost in Las Vegas

Following the success of Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows, internationally acclaimed producer Paul Jay has hit it again with Lost in Las Vegas, premiering exclusively on A&E on April 29.

The doc, as Jay explains, ‘is about two performers from Toronto who impersonate two actors who play two fictitious characters in a town where everything’s a replica of everything else.’

In other words, two guys, Wayne Catania and Kieron Lafferty, take their Blues Brothers act to Las Vegas where they audition for the famous Legends impersonators show. After the audition, they embark on an Alice in Wonderland journey through Vegas, where they explore whether they really want to uproot their families to such an artificial society. ‘It’s a road trip of sorts,’ says Jay, who started following the duo’s adventure last June, wrapping in early October. ‘It’s a metaphor for bigger social debate.’

A two-hour, Sunday night special, Lost in Las Vegas is written, directed and produced by Jay of jfilms in Toronto.

Exec producers are jfilms’ David M. Ostriker and A&E’s Amy Briamonte.

‘A&E was really good to me. They gave me a free hand creatively,’ says Jay, whose relationship with the channel began with Hitman and will most certainly continue beyond Lost, he affirms.

The doc will make its world screen premiere on April 19 at the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Hot Docs, which Jay founded and formerly chaired, is also putting on a special screening of the film on April 25 at the Paramount.

Meantime, Jay is working with Barna-Alper Productions on a dramatic MOW based on Hitman for CTV. ‘We’re expanding the story because the Brett story actually ended before [his brother] Owen died, so now we can take it further,’ says Jay, who is producing the film.

Also in partnership with Barna-Alper, Jay is producing and partially directing the 13-part series In Your Dreams for Showcase.

The fictional series, written by Noel Baker (Hard Core Logo), is an exploration of where the psyche meets the erotic. ‘Erotica for smart people,’ adds Jay.

Jay is, of course, the creator and exec producer of Counterspin, which currently runs four nights a week on CBC Newsworld, but come the fall season it will air an additional night a week on CBC.

S&S puts an American in Canada

S&S Productions is sitting pretty these days with projects new and old receiving the thumbs-up from the LFP.

In new project news, the prodco is in development with the CBC on American in Canada, a one-hour series pilot about a jaded American broadcaster who is unwillingly relocated from the U.S. to Calgary where he hosts a morning show.

Described as a comedy that looks at Canada from the eyes of an American, the $1-million pilot was written by Howard Busgang (Boy Meets World exec producer) and produced by Sari Friedland.

The pilot will likely go to camera in Toronto this summer, with some exteriors to be shot in Calgary.

A director has yet to be named.

Company principal David Smith is exec producing.

S&S will distribute.

The 5th Quadrant is another new series on the S&S front. The 13-part, half-hour comedy for The Comedy Network is a spoof of the ubiquitous supernatural/paranormal shows.

Written, produced and starring Lee Smart (The Red Green Show), the series will be hosted and each episode has a theme which is demonstrated through tongue-in-cheek interviews and pretaped footage of dramatic recreations, pseudo-documentaries, movie clips, etc.

The series, budgeted at $800,000, will go to camera in either Toronto or Hamilton this summer.

S&S is distributing and Smith is exec producing.

A director is yet to be named.

In returning series news: History Bites is going forward with episodes 64-87 for History Television; season 11 of The Red Green Show for the CBC is set to go; Gardner’s Journal will also be producing its 11th season for HGTV; and Anything I Can Do will return to WTN for a second season.

Great Canadian Food Show gets New York nod

The Great Canadian Food Show, produced by Ottawa’s Knight Enterprises, has been nominated for a James Beard Award in the category of best television food journalism for the second year in a row.

The awards take place in New York, April 30.

Broadcast on Food Network since fall 2000 and previously on the CBC, the series, produced by company principal Chris Knight, directed by Trevor Grant (Playing With Poison) and hosted by Carlo Rota, explores great Canadian food from source to kitchen to plate.

Riding on the success of the show, which is currently in production on season four, Knight is in development on a new cooking show, Cook Like a Chef, a 39-part, half-hour series for Food.

With more of a focus on technique, the new series, produced by Kathy Doherty and directed by Grant, will provide a platform for celebrity guest chefs to demonstrate their techniques working with various foods.

The series will go into production in May for fall broadcast.

Tapestry expands into performing arts

Tapestry Pictures of Toronto and Really Useful Films of London, Eng. recently wrapped on the performance-based coproduction By Jeeves, based on P.G. Wodehouse’s beloved stories of Bertie Wooster and his butler Jeeves and featuring music by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Shot in studio at the CBC, the film adaptation of the stage musical of the same name features an international cast, including Canadian Heath Lamberts and veteran British stage and TV actor Martin Jarvis.

It was directed by Alan Ayckbourn, produced by Austin Shaw (exec producer of Really Useful Films) and Tapestry’s Mary Young Leckie and Heather Goldin.

The MOW, which will make its North American debut on the CBC in the 2001/02 season, marks Tapestry’s expansion from drama into performing arts. Young Leckie says the company is also moving into documentary. *