Vancouver filmmaker David Paperny is again putting his love of documentaries into a series of new shows and specials for nonfiction channels on both sides of the border.

‘It’s basic reality – then we tweak it,’ he says of the lineup. ‘This is our best year ever, we’ve a big slate.’

For starters, the 8 x 60 Jetstream is now on location at CFB Cold Lake, AB. A kind of Top Gun meets Canadian Idol, it shadows elite fighter pilots in training, documenting who makes it and who doesn’t and is set for next fall on Discovery Channel.

Food Network Canada, meanwhile, expects to air Glutton for Punishment early next year. The 13 x 30 follows Bob Blumer (Surreal Gourmet) around the world to various culinary challenges, including a Guinness-drinking contest in Ireland and the Waiter’s Race in New York City.

‘It’s an expensive show to do,’ says Paperny. ‘It was hard to get funding, it took us two years. First we presold it to Food Network Canada, and then it was picked up by Fine Living USA.’

His Paperny Films has also just wrapped the 13 x 30 Road Hockey Rumble for the 2006/07 season on OLN, following two guys who challenge locals to games of road hockey in different communities.

‘It’s a bit of Jackass, wild boys, travelogue, sports show and comedy,’ says Paperny, who exec produces with partner Cal Shumiatcher, working on budgets that range from $60,000 per half-hour to $400,000 for the hour-long eps and specials.

‘I’m attracted to the lower budget, it’s real, gritty and viewers want to see it,’ he says. ‘Canadians, like the British, are getting a reputation for this kind of show – it’s fast, unpredictable. We’re using our backgrounds as documentary makers in a new way.’

Paperny principal Audrey Mehler is exec producing The Blonde Mystique (1 x 60) – which follows three women who take turns living with each other’s hair color – for W Network, while Nijole Kuzmickas (From Grief to Action) directs Homeless for CBC Newsworld’s The Passionate Eye, the Knowledge Network, ACCESS and SCN. The one-off documents a year in the lives of three down-and-outers trying to get off the streets of Vancouver and into homes of their own. Filming begins this month.

Meanwhile, Paperny is directing his first feature doc, Confessions of an Innocent Man: The William Sampson Story, recounting the true story of the Canadian businessman who survived three years of torture in a Saudi Arabian jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Filming began in September and continues this month in Europe. Confessions is coproduced with the National Film Board and for CTV.