Only in Canada could there be a six-year gap between seasons of a hit series, but a second run of The Newsroom is, finally, now underway in Toronto. Tele-auteur Ken Finkleman has written another 13 eps of the black comedy and will again direct and star, appearing alongside Peter Keleghan and Karen Hines. Season one regular Jeremy Hotz and Leah Pinsent, seen in last year’s MOW Escape from the Newsroom, are not returning.

The series is backed by CBC’s licence fee, Telefilm Canada and the Canadian Television Fund.

‘The first season of The Newsroom was more innocent because it was satirical,’ says Finkleman. ‘We looked at the world and tried to take it on. This time it’s darker because it accepts the futility of change.’

Gemini winner Joan Hutton is DOP again, and longtime Finkleman collaborator Daniel Murphy sits in as assistant director. Oleg Savytski is art director while Alexander Reda is costume designer. Season two shoots until mid-October and airs in January on CBC.

New Looks for Life

Toronto-based Tricon Films & Television is partway through the first 15 half-hours of Much in Your Space, a makeover show for MuchMusic set to air Aug 25. The show gives full rock-star-style makeovers to lucky teens and their bedrooms, and has been filming on a very hectic schedule, out of an RV, in Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, North Bay and Toronto since July, under directors and Tricon principals Andrea Gorfolova and Jameel Bharmal. Stops on the East Coast are also in the works. Each ep costs in the mid five figures.

Meanwhile, the company is shooting season five of Matchmaker, its flagship dating show, and the pilot for another makeover series, called Couple New Looks, both for Life Network and exec producer Ann Harbron. New Looks makes over two couples at once and is expected to shoot its first season sometime after September. It is coproduced with Daniel Friedman’s Storm Entertainment.

Mean screen teens

Producer Lorne Michaels and Paramount have sent Mark S. Waters to Toronto to shoot the comedy feature Mean Girls, which gets underway mid-September for a four-week stay at Toronto Film Studios.

Lisa Lohan, who just wrapped the similarly aimed Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, is up for the lead, playing a brainy gal who runs afoul of the most popular girl at her school. Lohan was seen most recently in the Waters-shot Freaky Friday.

The script was reworked by Saturday Night Live star Tina Fey from the Rosalind Wiseman book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Teen Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence.

Whale story

Documentarian Ed Barreveld (Aftermath: The Remnants of War) just got back from 29 days in India – shooting Shipbreakers for CBC’s The Nature of Things – and has signed on to produce Peter Lynch’s latest, Whale of a Tale, for CBC’s Rough Cuts. It’s the true story of how a mysterious whale bone, unearthed by a Toronto work crew in the late 1980s, set off a storm of wildly unscientific speculation in the media. Whales, of course, are not usually found in these parts.

The $220,000 one-hour looks at the curious find, its possible origins and the odd behavior of the press. Barreveld and Lynch have formed a new, as yet unnamed, production company and are paying the bills with help from CTF LFP and the Canadian Independent Film and Video Fund. Shooting runs until fall.

Rudy Blahacek (Cyberman) is DOP, Senjay Mehta is on sound and Lynch’s wife and longtime editor Caroline Christie will cut and deliver by next April. The Independent Film Channel has picked up second window.

Barreveld is also producing Bruce and Me by Australian director Oren Siedler. The Canadian/Australian copro turned heads when it was pitched at Hot Docs in the spring, and has been picked up by both Life Network and Oz’s ABC. It will also air on IFC, Discovery Health Canada and Finland’s YLE. Siedler is telling the story of her womanizing conman father.

The whole thing will cost some $210,000 and will wrap by fall, following some final shoots in the U.S., Canada and Australia.

Dive-in theatre

Five divers went to the bottom of the English Channel last month for director Wayne Abbott, who is partway through a second doc about the ill-fated HMCS Athabaskan for History Television. Abbott, shooting under the banner of his Northern Sky Entertainment, hopes to solve the mystery of the Canadian warship, which sunk under mysterious circumstances in WWII, and took some 30 people across the Atlantic for three days of underwater shooting. The footage is now being reviewed by navy experts. ‘We’ve done what we can. The ship has to speak now,’ says Abbott.

The one-hour, working with the title Unlucky Lady II, will run close to $200,000, with help from LFP and the History licence fee. History’s Cindy Witten and Steve Gamester produce.