There’s a perennial appeal to medical TV shows. A hospital – as a kind of self-contained environment – is a great context for the study of different characters, and there’s something about the episodic format that fits with the idea of having to treat different illnesses on different days.

Each episode can involve a panoply of different acute cases, and there’s space around this to develop the kinds of character quirks and interpersonal relationships that fuel TV drama.

Add to this the high-pressure context of working in a hospital emergency dapartment, and we can see why hospitals have been enduringly popular settings for TV over the years, from Dr. Kildare (1961–66) to ER (1994–2009) to House (2004–12).

The F Ward is the latest Australian medical drama. And it’s a good one. Created by Dan Edwards and Kelsey Munro, the show is centred around the emergency department in The Pines Hospital, a fictional hospital on Sydney’s Northern Beaches that offers the last chance for failing medical interns to prove their mettle and become full-fledged doctors.

Despite references to real Sydney places........

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