Outback heroes take to the skies
A rare and welcome return of the famed Aussie drama about the flying doctors service is a classy reboot offering broad appeal, finds Debi Enker.
The eight-part Australian series RFDS: Royal Flying Doctor Service bucks current trends: There is no dystopian darkness, no murder plot, no mothers behaving badly or singles looking for love. Shot on location in Broken Hill, in large part at the RFDS base, and with a focus on rural and regional Australia, it’s a tribute to the service’s staff and to the vast community that relies on them.
‘‘One of my favourite shows is Friday Night Lights,’’ says co-creator and producer Imogen Banks.
‘‘I love the way that the town is one of the main characters. That was one of our early references; we wanted to build a mosaic of a community.’’
As well, says co-creator, co-script producer and writer Ian Meadows, ‘‘We wanted to represent the truth of being someone who is relied upon at the frontier of medicine and aviation, and the sole connection for these families and communities that are hundreds of kilometres from help.
‘‘We were interested in the psychological, physical and mental challenges for the front-line health workers and first responders.’’
The drama aims to portray the town as a vibrant destination. Banks says that she, as well as the cast and crew, fell in love with the place, noting the availability of good coffee, that unofficial yet widely accepted gauge of liveability.
‘‘It’s a sophisticated place,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s not like being dumped in the middle of nowhere, which is often how these stories of remote places are told: they’re all about hardship and lack of choice. Broken Hill is a thriving community.
‘‘Of course, it’s got its problems because there are 18,000 people living there, so there’s the full spectrum of humanity. But we didn’t want to make a patronising show that portrayed Australians as unsophisticated people in a big, brown land being bitten by things.’’
A key goal of that portrayal was to capture the desert landscape in a style that was vivid without being postcard kitsch.
‘‘What’s beautiful about Damo’s work [cinematographer Damian Wyvill] is that he found specificity in it,’’ says Banks. ‘‘He didn’t over-crank the red. It’s not red all the time. That’s what’s addictive about being there: there’s a spectrum of beautiful bruised colours.’’
Adds Meadows, ‘‘We didn’t want that bluerinsed, washed-out, very cool tone but we also didn’t want it to be too rosy. We were trying to capture how stunning and stark it is.’’
The drama’s introduction to the community comes through English doctor Eliza Harrod (Emma Hamilton) who resolves to make a fresh start there with her teenage son, Henry (Ash Hodgkinson).
Using a foreigner as a newcomer fulfils a couple of functions. It could be advantageous for international sales – it has already sold to the United States, the United Kingdom and several European countries. In addition, Eliza is the outsider, the viewer’s guide to the community.
Meadows notes that there are many foreign doctors working for the service, particularly English and Irish, and describes the setup with Eliza as ‘‘a useful trope, a classic way of entering the world, and a way of seeing Australia with fresh eyes’’.
As well as encountering chillier-than-expected nights, she finds herself working with a tight-knit and capable team that includes Dr Wayne Yates (Rob Collins), flight nurse Pete Emerson (Stephen Peacocke), base manager Leonie Smith (Justine Clarke) and pilot Mira Ortez (Ash Ricardo).
They’re Aussie-casual about their expertise, but not at all nonchalant about what they do and how they do it. As a group of professionals, they’re a model of competence, strength and sensitivity.
While much of the drama stems from episodic medical emergencies, there are also unfolding events in the core characters’ private lives, and those stories allow for the introduction of a younger generation and some less-familiar faces:
‘‘We didn’t want to make a patronising show that portrayed Australians as unsophisticated people in a big, brown land being bitten by things.’’
Imogen Banks
Co-creator and producer
Wayne has a teenage son (Thomas Weatherall); Pete has a niece (Sofia Nolan).
A third-episode conversation between Leonie and Henry, who’s having difficulties adapting to his new home, underscores the series’ essential humanity: ‘‘The longer you live,’’ she says kindly to the dispirited teenager, ‘‘the more you realise that people are rarely good or bad. We’re all just trying to do the best we can. It’s hard to get it right.’’
Work on RFDS has been under way for more than three years, originally inspired by a suggestion from producer Mark Fennessy. And while it also deals with the service that was the basis for the locally and internationally successful series, The Flying Doctors (1986-92), it was never intended as a remake.
‘‘We were interested in looking at remote Australia and this was a great lens,’’ Banks says. ‘‘I’m interested in the construction of the Australian identity and so much of it seems to have come from the interior and these ideas about men. I was really interested in exploring Australian masculinity, but in a gentle way. I didn’t want to do a big ‘expose’.’’
She filled the production’s ranks with people who knew the terrain. Meadows grew up in a small WA town and is the son of a GP. Writer and co-script producer Claire Phillips grew up in the New South Wales city of Dubbo, which is also an RFDS base.
Banks notes that, when it came to casting, Peacocke was ‘‘so passionate about representing that world and that character: he knows it. He grew up in Dubbo, went to university in Newcastle and spent time as a jackaroo in Bourke.’’
As for the newcomer, Banks recalls that Hamilton, an Australian who has studied and worked in the UK, ‘‘placed the character exactly where she needed to be, an Englishwoman coming into a world that didn’t make sense to her, but she wasn’t going to be an idiot about it’’.
Although pre-production began in Broken Hill early last year, the series was derailed by the pandemic. Three weeks before production was due to start, it shut down.
Everyone left in March, not knowing if or when they would be able to return. The 16-week shoot eventually began in July, but at every stage, it was a logistical and budgetary challenge.
‘‘It was such an uncertain time and we were so lucky to get back there,’’ says Meadows. ‘‘The Broken Hill community and the RFDS were great to us and we tried to be respectful of quarantine. We just held our breath and barrelled on, hoping that nothing came up. Everybody felt incredibly grateful to be working.’’
The travel restrictions resulted in Broken Hill locals and some crew members appearing on screen, and Banks notes they found some ‘‘treasures’’.
Actor Meadows (A Moody Christmas, The Wrong Girl) was also enlisted to make an unplanned appearance in front of the camera. Given the challenges, and the admiration and affection for the RFDS and the Broken Hill community, the series is regarded by its makers with particular pride.
‘‘We wanted to create something distinctly Australian that has universal appeal,’’ says Meadows. ‘‘It was made with a lot of love.’’
– Sydney Morning Herald
RFDS starts on Monday on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ OnDemand.