RFDS Season 3 review: punchy medical drama aims sky high

Seven’s RFDS: Royal Flying Doctor Service is pretty much the last remaining example of a genre that used to dominate Australian television: the prime-time commercial drama series. The days of huge hits like Offspring and Packed to the Rafters may be over, but it wasn’t all that long ago that series like Doctor Doctor, House Husbands and various Underbelly spin-offs were still fixtures on free-to-air television. And that was just on Nine, a network that is yet to air any Australian-made free-to-air drama in 2025.

It’s easy to say it’s no great loss. The ABC is still making local drama, pretty much all the streaming services serve up a couple of local series each year, and local actors are finding work all over the place (especially in NZ dramas that air here). It’s not like we’re short of familiar faces on our screens.

But it doesn’t take long watching the new season of RFDS – back after a two-year break – to realise that while ABC dramas are often quirky or high-concept and streaming shows have an eye on global audiences, prime-time commercial drama has a certain blunt approach to audience engagement that you don’t find anywhere else.

RFDS: Australian drama guns for global audiences

RFDS doesn’t exactly ignore the realities of the global drama marketplace: you don’t spend so much time flying over spectacular outback settings, or have a UK transplant character as the lead, if you’re not hoping to make serious overseas sales.

But there’s a straightforward energy to RFDS’ mix of soap opera romances and high drama medical action that you don’t get in dramas where the audience (or in the ABC’s case, the programmers) have paid up front. This is a series that needs you to keep watching, and once it has your attention it’s not letting go.

Which explains why the first episode back is built around a pretty impressive bus crash in the middle of the outback that leaves a whole lot of people in need of emergency medical treatment.

The RFDS is overwhelmed: it’s up to UK expat Doctor Eliza Harrod (played by Australian actress Emma Hamilton) to decide who gets first go when it comes to treatment, knowing full well that her choices might mean others die.

And what of her love interest? Last season saw nurse Pete Emerson (Stephen Peacocke) suspended from work and in exile; now he’s heading back and not everyone’s thrilled at his return. He’s also facing a rival for Eliza’s affections, with fiery (well, he’s a Fire and Safety officer) newcomer Ryan Jarvis (Rick Davies) now firmly established on his turf. Does his moustache give him the edge? Stay tuned.

The more mundane aspects of the job get a look in too. The first episode back begins with a major emergency that turns out to largely be a major case of gas (you can’t go wrong with a fart joke) and a surprise pregnancy that involves a fair amount of medical jargon.

It feels like a series that’s keen to get the details right, giving a nice touch of accuracy to what is, deep down, a reboot of Nine’s mid-80s series The Flying Doctors.

RFDS Season 3 refreshes the formula

That’s not the only way the basics have been updated. The cast is much more diverse, and there’s an awareness that the old doctor-nurse romance dynamics don’t quite cut it that goes beyond the gender-swap between Pete and Eliza.

For one, pilot Graham Morley (Rodney Afif) and base manager Leonie Smith (Justine Clarke) are still secretly together, and still trying to work out exactly what it is they’re up to.

It’s the big bus crash that’s the big focus here, complete with pill-popping bus driver (who’s a bit of a dickhead to boot) and a bunch of victims who we get to know just well enough to feel the stakes when things start getting gory.

There’s not all that much blood but if you’re not a fan of broken bones and weird bulges (some of which move as the patient breathes) this can be a bit confronting.

Everyone gets called out, blood supplies (and planes) are in short supply, there are a lot of flies buzzing around the injured and needles are going in while the cases grow more complicated and the body count rises, and the whole episode has the kind of dramatic urgency we don’t often see in local drama these days.

There are a few tics here and there. The medical staff often speak in confusing jargon, and flying everywhere means plenty of sweeping, tourism-commercial shots of the outback. But it’s a small price to pay for a local drama that first and foremost is committed to grabbing and keeping your attention.

‘This will be overwhelming,’ Eliza says as the RFDS fly towards the bus crash; it’d be great if more Australian television drama had that goal in mind.

RFDS: Royal Flying Doctor Service airs Wednesdays at 7.30pm on Channel 7 and 7plus.

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