South Portland-based filmmaker Lisa Quijano Wolfinger is helping to create a new historical drama.

Wolfinger, co-owner of Lone Wolf Media on Cottage Road, is a creator and executive producer of the upcoming PBS series “Mercy Street.” The dramatic series, based on true stories, will focus on volunteer nurses on both sides during the Civil War. It is scheduled to join the PBS Sunday night lineup, when the British series “Downton Abbey” also airs, in the winter of 2016.

A news release about the series from PBS lists Wolfinger’s fellow executive producers on the series as Ridley Scott (“Gladiator” and “Thelma & Louise”) and David W. Zucker (“The Good Wife”). She created the series with David Zabel (“ER”), according to the release.

Filming is scheduled to begin this spring in Virginia.

The story is set at Mansion House, a luxury hotel converted to a Union Army hospital in Alexandria, Virginia. The release did not say who any of the actors are.

Wolfinger could not be reached for comment Friday. But in the PBS release, she said the series would focus more on the drama of “everyday life” during the war than on the war itself.

“We think of the Civil War as a brutal, devastating chapter in American history, but it was also a moment of remarkable transition that presented opportunities unthinkable just a few years before. Doctors, faced with mass casualties on an unprecedented scale, pushed the boundaries of medical science, women left the confines of the home and volunteered as nurses, and thousands of escaped slaves got their first taste of freedom,” Wolfinger said in the release. “This series is not about battles and glory, it’s about the drama and unexpected humor of everyday life behind the front lines. It’s a new twist on an iconic story, one that resonates with larger themes we still struggle with today.”

Wolfinger has worked on a wide range of film and TV projects, including historical dramas and documentaries. Some of her credits include “Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower,” “Witch Hunt,” a docudrama about the Salem witch trials, and “Conquest of America.”