Television

Light Documentary Series

Peter Hays has been a key part of many TV series projects over the past two decades.

Genres range from occupational documentaries, to entertainment programs, live game shows and news magazines, home renovation series, light documentary series, true crime, lifestyle TV, scripted comedies and live-to-tape standup specials.

Services provided include development, directing, writing, producing, executive producing, show running, story department management, story editing, and post-production co-ordination.

In 2023 TPL produced Landmarks, a (5×10) series about places that matter to people.

Peter Hays produced and wrote 42 x 30 episodes of Car Stories for Joe Media Group, about the love affair between people and their vintage cars.

He also created, produced, directed and wrote two seasons of Growing Concerns for Joe Media Group, about innovations in agriculture.

  • Car Stories

      Car Stories: a TV series that takes us for a ride with dedicated car lovers and their fabulous machines. It’s a story of beauty and the call of the open [...]

  • Landmarks

    Concept Landmarks is about places that matter to people. Our stories come alive through people who love where they live. History builds like sedimentary layers on a river bottom. Landmarks [...]

  • Growing Concerns

    Food security. Climate change. Genetic modification. If you need food, this program is of interest to you. The world is shifting daily and anxiety is on the rise. Food is plentiful now [...]

Occupational Documentaries

One-hour series ‘occ docs’ such as Ice Pilots, Yukon Gold and Timber Kings are challenging productions to shoot and write. They have in common the theme of men (and occasionally women) who give ‘The Man’ the finger and head north to make their fortunes in the land of the midnight sun.

Typically, production crews that head north to capture these stories find themselves shooting vast hours of repetitive actions, such as digging earth, loading logs or flying planes. They then bring back hundreds of hours of footage and interviews that need to be crafted into a compelling narrative. Peter Hays has provided senior story editing (writing in non-linear edit suites) for several of these bigger-budget shows.

  • Yukon Gold

    Yukon Gold follows four gold mining crews who have only four short months in Canada's wild Yukon to earn one BIG payday. With the price of gold hovering at record-breaking levels, a [...]

  • Timber Kings

    Timber Kings tells the stories of exceptional home builders, who make engineered custom log mansions for elite customers all over the world.The logs are harvested in northern British Columbia and milled at [...]

  • Ice Pilots

    Ice Pilots NWT (known in the UK and the US as Ice Pilots) is a reality television series broadcast on History Television that portrays Buffalo Airways, an airline based in Yellowknife, Northwest [...]

  • Pyros

    Pyros is a reality television series that follows Montreal based pyrotechnic company, Groupe Fiatlux-Ampleman (GFA), as they travel to Canada (for Canada Day), Mexico, the United Kingdom, Congo, France, Germany, and the [...]

Entertainment Magazine Shows

Peter Hays spent five years working in Hollywood for several years in the scandalous 2000’s. He was in a paparazzo’s car chasing Britney Spears down Mulholland Drive, wrote and directed several A&E Biographies, and met and interviewed some of his heroes including Shirley Jones, Adam West, Betty White and Stan Lee.

  • Whatever Happened To?

    Fueled by nostalgia and a touch of mystery, "What Ever Happened To?" dives into the lives of once-famous figures. From child stars to pop culture icons, the show explores their fascinating journeys [...]

  • A&E Biography – Jason Priestley

    A&E Biography delves into the fascinating lives of iconic figures. Each episode uses interviews, archival footage, and dramatic reenactments to explore the triumphs and struggles that shaped their legacies. From groundbreaking artists [...]

  • Books Into Film – Atonement

    Books Into Film enthralls viewers with its insider look at how directors translate beloved books into captivating films and TV shows. Witness the creative fire ignite as seasoned directors dissect iconic stories, [...]

  • Books Into Film – Stan Lee

    Stan Lee never got respect for his work as the editor of Marvel comics until computer graphics (CGI) caught up with his imagination.For most of his life, Lee's creations such as the [...]

True Crime

Since Peter Hays was a cub cops-and-courts reporter at the Medicine Hat News he has had an interest in true crime. He ran the story department for the (65 x 30) series In Plain Sight (Frantic Films), and oversaw production of 13 one-hour episodes of Finally Caught (Black Watch Entertainment).

TPL has developed proprietary series concepts Dead Quiet and the animated series Prairie Crimes.

  • Prairie Crimes

    True-crime series often struggle to convincingly show the audience how the original crimes happened. Actual footage of a crime scene is hard to come by and is usually limited to long shots [...]

  • Dead Quiet

    The Canadian Prairies are unique. A vast emptiness stretches in all directions. In this wild and remote place, a desperate cry for help almost always goes unheard. Each episode of Dead Quiet [...]

  • In Plain Sight

    In Plain Sight (aka Killer in Plain Sight) is a riveting 52×30 True-crime TV series by Frantic Films for Discovery ID (2018). Each episode is a puzzling whodunit, featuring some of the [...]

Lifestyle TV

Peter Hays wrote, directed, and produced 65 episodes of Open Homes (his title), a popular home-reno series that showed viewers how to increase the value of their homes before putting them up for sale.

Peter was senior story editor for Emergency (Force Four Entertainment), a series that followed people through their experiences in busy emergency departments in Vancouver-area hospitals.

He also produced a live daily interactive game show (Call To Win).

  • Emergency

    Take a behind the scenes look at three of Canada's busiest hospital emergency departments in greater Vancouver, in this reality style series. We follow patients, their families, and hospital staff as they [...]

  • Open Homes

    What if you had $1,000 and a group of friends who were ready to help you get your home ready to sell? Could you add much more value and curb appeal to [...]

Scripted Comedies

Peter Hays created and produced 22Online, the internet version of the popular CBC comedy series This Hour Has 22 Minutes, in Halifax.

He then co-created Liography, a (26 x 30) Comedy Network series starring Leslie Nielsen and parodying entertainment biographies.

He produced two live one-hour comedy stand-up specials for CBC, including the first special to be headlined by an indigenous comic.

Peter Hays was working at Salter Street Films producing the online version of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, called 22Online, when he and Ian Johnston cooked up the idea of a comedy series that parodied A&E’s Biography, which at the time was a hugely popular one-hour documentary show on cable TV.

Each half-hour episode parodied the life of a famous person. While Biography’s motto was ‘Every Life has a Story’ Liography professed that ‘Every Story Should Get a LIfe.’ Leslie hosted the show, while Canada’s best comedic actors portrayed the fictional legends.

Peter found a small production company called Creative Atlantic to work with in Halifax, and at his brother Matt’s suggestion reached out to Leslie Nielsen, the iconic leading man who had found a second career in comedy after appearing in the Zucker Brothers’ classic comedy, Airplane!

Leslie was tickled at the idea of sending up his Airplane! co-star, Peter Graves, who hosted Biography for A&E. The (26×30) series was produced in Halifax and ran for two seasons on The Comedy Network.