Unlike most showmen, Steven Ellis has no problem working with children or animals. The president of Toronto’s Ellis Entertainment just saw his 3 x 60 doc The Baby Human debut on Discovery Health in the U.S. and is now at work on five one-hours of Beastly Countdowns for Animal Planet and Discovery Channel Canada.

Each ep of the $1.25-million series spotlights the top 10 ugliest, noisiest, most annoying, and so on, critters known to man. Exec producer Ellis (Wild Sites, Profiles of Nature) hopes the series will lead to similar shows and an eventual brand of animal/reality programming.

‘Countdown shows are very popular right now, because documentaries can be very dry,’ he says. ‘The key to it is finding interesting animals.’

Head of production Kip Spidell will shoot new footage, to be mixed with archival material, at a Toronto facility over the summer and deliver by August. The show, coproduced with the U.K.’s Principal Films and Ellis subsidiary Ellis Vision, will air this fall and a follow-up series is already in development

Ellis also hopes to turn out more eps of his baby series, the first three of which air this month as The Human Baby in the States and as Oh Baby on Canada’s Discovery Health. Shot by director Eileen Thalenberg on a $900,000 budget – licence fees, federal and provinicial tax credits and CIFVF cash – the HD-shot show looks at the latest science about how babies learn and grow.

The company is also developing a documentary adventure series about the Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief, the British group that, much like Doctors Without Borders, sends engineers all over the world to do emergency humanitarian work. Still in early development, Adventures of the RedR is being shopped to broadcasters.

The moveable east

CBC Atlantic crews will follow East Coast talent cross-country to shoot two TV specials in Ottawa during next month’s Atlantic Scene arts festival. The 13-day fest at the National Arts Centre draws some 400 East Coast musicians and performers and will air as a two-hour special, Atlantic Waves by director Shelagh O’Brien, on May 25. Geoff D’Eon (Talking to Americans, East Coast Music Awards) and Michael Lewis (East Coast Music Awards) produce. Expect performances by Ashley MacIsaac, Buck 65 and teen gospel singer Tiyaila Cain Grant, among others.

Meanwhile, O’Brien will also work with host Rick Mercer on Comedy from the Coast, shooting the all-Easterner comedy show at the NAC on May 22 and paring it down to a TV hour to air this fall. Seven comics including Cathy Jones, Shaun Majumder and Mike Robinson will crack wise before piling back into the van and driving home.

Wedding hells

Toronto’s primamedia is posting I Do and How Much?, a one-hour doc about the horrors of wedding preparations due at Life Network by mid-month and expected to air in June. Director and coproducer Anthony Corindia followed two couples through over two months as they prepared, and fought bitterly over, the music, food, guest lists other endless details of the… er… happiest day of their lives. It cost $134,000 – just slightly less, it seems, than the average wedding.

‘They all start out the same,’ says Corindia. ‘Inviting 150 people and expecting to pay $20,000.’ Then the guest list grows and the price balloons. ‘Next thing, they’re putting on what amounts to a Broadway play that only lasts six hours.’

He and partner Smith Corindia will also shoot a demo this summer of Generations, a half-hour cooking show wherein real-life mothers-in-law teach their daughters-in-law to cook. The pair is also shopping Sew What, a proposed half-hour ‘makeover’ series about old and second-hand clothes.

Dead, again

Ahh! Zombies! Toronto will also host the remake of George Romero’s 1979 thriller Dawn of the Dead, scheduled to shoot through June and August for Strike Entertainment and Universal with rookie Zack Snyder at the helm. Michael MacDonald (eXistenZ) is production manager, Marc Abraham (Spy Game, The Hurricane) and Eric Newman (The Emperor’s Club) produce. No word yet on the cast.

Confessions…

British director Sara Sugarman (Very Annie Mary, Mad Cows) makes her North American debut in Toronto this June and July, shooting Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Local Alison Pill (Fast Food High, Perfect Pie) and Lindsay Lohan (Get a Clue) star in the comic feature about a snooty Manhattanite who moves, with her family, to New Jersey. Bob Shapiro and Jerry Leider produce for Disney.

…and more confessions

BIG-time congrats to director Don McBrearty (The Arrow), who earlier this month scored a Peabody Award for his Toronto-shot pic The Interrogation of Michael Crowe. The true story – a three-way copro by Court TV, JB Media and Hearst Entertainment – recounts how, in 1998, California cops wrung a false murder confession from a 14-year-old boy, played by Mark Rendall (Touching Wild Horses). The prestigious awards, based at the University of Georgia, honor excellence in broadcasting.