HALIFAX — The Jesse Stone franchise, about a small-town New England detective with a drinking problem, played by Tom Selleck, is returning to Nova Scotia for a fifth edition. Jesse Stone: Thin Ice opened a production office this week in Halifax with the expected start date in August.

The MOW will be broadcast in 2008 on CBS, produced by Brandman Productions and Sony Pictures Television, with Selleck again credited as an executive producer. Gilles Bélanger (Poor Boy’s Game, Shattered City) will be the production manager.

The previous entries in the series have proven to be ratings winners for CBS, even in reruns. The first three, Stone Cold, Jesse Stone: Night Passage and Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise are already available on DVD, and the most recent one, Jesse Stone: Sea Change, was broadcast on CBS in May. Hallmark Channel in the U.S. has purchased the rights to the first four pictures and will be rerunning them beginning in August.

All four MOWs shot in Halifax, directed by Robert Harmon (Highwaymen). Harmon has returned for Thin Ice.

The Jesse Stone movies are based on a series of novels by American crime writer Robert B. Parker, though Thin Ice is an original screenplay and not based on any book. There are six Jesse Stone novels in print.