Toronto has had some experience starring as the site of a mysterious and lethal epidemic, so much of what plays out in the first two episodes of ReGenesis will seem very familiar to anyone who was near this city, or near a television, during the SARS outbreak.

The new drama from Shaftesbury Films for The Movie Network and Movie Central follows a team of experts who investigate and move in whenever something goes Horribly Wrong with a virus or a disease and, for their first case, they’ve got a big honking whopper on their rubber-gloved hands. A kissing cousin of the Ebola virus is spreading towards Toronto and no one has the foggiest idea how to stop it.

Time to break out the surgical masks and hazmat suits.

Producer and Shaftesbury head Christina Jennings started developing the 13 x 60 series five years ago, taking her cues from real-world headlines about viruses, bioterrorism and tainted water. ‘That’s why the idea was so strong,’ she says. ‘This stuff is everywhere.’

TMN and Movie Central agreed and signed on, backing the mid-budget series with help from Movie Central parent Corus Entertainment, the Canadian Television Fund, the Rogers Cable Network Fund, the Independent Production Fund and Ontario tax credits.

The pay channels are taking a page from HBO’s book and pushing the series as a prestige one-hour, their first after testing the waters with Dice and Slings & Arrows. It debuts on Oct. 24, playing Sundays at 9 p.m. against CTV’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent and an open-ended slot on CBC.

‘ReGenesis was really important to them,’ says Jennings. ‘[TMN and Movie Central] and those programmers are saying, ‘Let’s bring some Canadian programming, some flare, to the network.”

Season one shot this year with directors John L’Ecuyer (Queer as Folk), Don McBrearty (The Interrogation of Malcolm Crowe) and Jerry Ciccoritti. It stars Peter Outerbridge (Men with Brooms), Maxim Roy (Les Boys) and Conrad Pla (Odyssey 5).

The result is a hybrid (or, if you prefer bio-jargon, a ‘chimera’) of science and procedural cop shows, following the flash-and-dazzle antics of CSI and the moral brinkmanship of the BBC’s MI-5. There are split screens and CG effects and the scripts by head writer Tom Chehak and his team are fast and heavy on the technicalities, culled from the notes of technical advisor Aled Edwards, a biochemistry prof at the University of Toronto.

Jennings acknowledges the similarities, but adds that ReGenesis is more character-driven. ‘You get to know this group of people much more than on CSI,’ she says.

ReGenesis is being sold abroad by Oasis Pictures, except in the U.K., where it is handled by London-based Portman Entertainment. Portman is also the sales agent for Shaftesbury’s period crime skein The Murdoch Mysteries, the latest episode of which is currently shooting in Toronto, also under L’Ecuyer.

Shaftesbury is also turning out a half-hour pilot for Global. The Jane Show, starring comic Teresa Pavlinek and Polly Shannon, shot last month and will air in early 2005. The company also has the half-hour pilot Walter Ego waiting to air on CBC.