Looking to raise its game in one-hour dramas, Breakthrough Entertainment has hired Canadian TV veteran Diane Boehme as senior development executive, scripted, features and factual.

Boehme comes to Breakthrough from EBTV, where for the last year she worked as EVP, television, charged with developing and producing scripted half-hours, one-hours and miniseries for the joint venture between Vancouver-based Brightlight Pictures and Los Angeles-based Essential Pictures.

Now Boehme will stick-handle Breakthrough’s primetime expansion from comedy and adult animation into one-hour live action dramas for the Canadian and international markets, while getting the indie producer deeper into feature films.

Boehme’s hire follows Carolyn Newman recently leaving Breakthrough as director of development to head up a newly launched Toronto office for Quebec TV producer Sphere Media Plus.

Ira Levy, who co-founded and runs Breakthrough Entertainment with Peter Williamson, tells Playback Daily that Boehme will use her bulging Rolodex to take the indie producer to the next level.

“We built up a good roster of talent that we’re working with, and want to expand that,” Levy explains.

Boehme said Breakthrough, which already has bench strength in scripted comedies, kids and animation programming, is aiming to do one-hour dramas that are either developed and produced in Canada and then exported to the world, or originate in Los Angeles before being brought to Canadian and international broadcasters.

“A number of models have worked well, like Rookie Blue and Flashpoint that are set in Canada and financed in Canada and find a home in the U.S.,” she explains.

Boehme added that, depending on the talent attached, a one-hour drama that is show-driven in the U.S. first can also be developed with a Canadian partner.

Those are primetime TV models that a host of other Canadian indie producers like Take 5 Productions, Shaftesbury Films and Entertainment One are pursuing.

While at EBTV, based in Toronto, Boehme supervised development on projects like Covenants, developed in partnership with Scott Free Television, and Mr. Hockey, a TV movie about NHL hockey legend Gordie Howe.

Before that, Boehme served as senior director, independent production at CHUM Television and then as director of original production for The Movie Network and HBO Canada.

Her TV credits include Less Than Kind and Call Me Fitz for HBO Canada, Terminal City and Durham County for TMN, and Murdoch Mysteries, which has been sold worldwide, including into China.