Review of Flying Doctors, The

Introduction

Following in the footsteps of `Sons and Daughters` and before the likes of `Neighbours` and `Home and Away` was `The Flying Doctors`, which ran for 221 episodes between 1986 and 1993 and was very popular. Before it became a weekly soap opera, `The Flying Doctors` was a 3 episode miniseries, which enabled Crawford Productions to start work on a weekly series. The miniseries established the characters and locations and introduced a new audience to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. In the (fictional) outback town of Coopers Crossing, Tom Callaghan (Andrew McFarlane) arrives as the new Doctor for the RFDS where he joins Dr. Harry Sinclair (Keith Eden) and nurse Kate Wellings (Lenore Smith). In action straight away, Tom flies (pun intended) into controversy and doesn`t make the impact on the residents of Coopers Crossing that he would have wished.

Tom Callaghan isn`t the only new arrival in the small town as mother and daughter Beth and Liz Drever (Vikki Hammond and Lorna Patterson) have flown in from New York to visit Beth`s brother.

With deaths, pregnancies and romance, this DVD includes the entire miniseries, running as one 204 minute feature.

Video

Time has not been kind and the visual quality is horrible. A veritable checklist of everything that could be wrong with a picture - grain, softness, dirt, rounded edges, aliasing, moiré and, when the camera moves quickly, you can play `count the pixels`.

Audio

A perfectly serviceable Dolby Digital 2.0 mono track.

Features

There is the `Original Flying Doctors Promo`, a `Blooper Reel` which is actually quite amusing and a `Stills Gallery`.

Conclusion

I didn`t watch `The Flying Doctors` when it was broadcast here and received the review disc before any information about it was available, so didn`t really know what to expect from this DVD. As with just about every DVD I watch, I checked the running time as it started and when 204 minutes appeared, I thought it was either a very long film or a best-of compilation of the soap. I had no idea that there was a miniseries of `The Flying Doctors` and this appears to be the three episodes in one go.

There is a need to suspend disbelief to enjoy this, as the inexperienced Dr. Callaghan manages to remove an appendix, deliver a baby by Caesarean section and diagnose a man with spinal injuries and put him in traction - all seemingly without the aid of so much as an X-ray machine! These are glaring errors but then again almost every TV show or film set in a hospital has some medical mistake of one form or another - how often is someone who is asystole (flatlining) shocked with a defibrillator?

Surprisingly, for a show called `The Flying Doctors`, there isn`t an awful lot of flying involved as most of the action takes place in Coopers Crossing, with Tom Callaghan and Harry Sinclair hoping the townspeople accept the new doctor, Tom beginning a relationship with Liz, a rodeo and even the `Miss Coopers Crossing` competition!

I don`t know why the DVD doesn`t have the miniseries split into episodes, meaning you have to watch it in one 204 minute sitting. If you`re a big fan of `The Flying Doctors`, you may want to check this disc out, but for everyone else given the terrible visual quality, plodding pace and soap opera standard of acting, scripting and direction, I`d give it a miss.