'' was one of the longest-running
Australia n
Television drama series. Though sometimes considered a
Soap Opera , the storylines of the two one-hour episodes screened over any one week formed a self-contained narrative block. It ran on the
Seven Network for 1,058 episodes from
November 18 ,
1981 to
November 22 ,
1993 . It also ran from April to November
1994 for 29 episodes on
Network Ten .
In addition to being broadcast in Australia, it also ran on
ITV in the
United Kingdom , as well as in many
European countries and
Hong Kong . It was estimated that at its height, the show received a worldwide audience of five to six million each week. It was also carried (initially, daily, then ultimately twice weekly, to show all episodes) in the Metropolitan Detroit area from the late 1980's to the mid-1990's, on the Windsor, Ontario station owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This was due to the Border Protection Agreement between the United States and Canada, under which Detroit television stations cannot show Canadian network programming and Canadian stations cannot show American network programming. The programming carried by the nationwide schedules but which cannot be showed in Detroit/Windsor has to replaced by something else, and most of the something else comes from Britain and Australia.
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The show followed a medical practice in the small fictional
New South Wales country town of Wandin Valley. The show's stories focused on the staff of the practice and the hospital and their families, and through weekly guest characters - frequently patients served by the practice - various social and medical problems were explored. The series frequently examined such topical issues as youth
Unemployment ,
Suicide ,
Drug Addiction ,
HIV/AIDS ,
Terminal Illness as well as
Aborigines and their place in modern Australian society.
''A Country Practice'' is available on DVD (Region 4, Australia). Two box sets, entitled "series one" (containing all 14 1981 episodes) and "series two" (containing only the first 30 1982 episodes) were released on
3 April 2006 .
''A Country Practice'' was shown regionally on the
ITV Network with the majority of regions starting to screen the series weekly from spring 1983 on Wednesdays at 1.30pm in the original hour-long format.
Central Television did not start the show until 1988.
Yorkshire Television chose to break away from the main Network transmission in 1984 and were the first television station in the world to break the programme into two half-hour episodes screening on Mondays and Tuesday at 3.30pm. This would lead them into difficulties with the screening of the series as whenever a public holiday ocurred (usually on Mondays), the 3.30pm slot would be unavailable for A Country Practice. This led to Part one of an episode starting on a Tuesday with viewers having to wait until the following Monday to conclude it.
Over time all 14 of the ITV regions screened the show at their own pace after breaking from the Network
Thames Television pattern. All regions eventually adopted the Yorkshire Television method of splitting the episodes into two. Thames Television became the first to conclude the series follwed by
Anglia Television in their daily 1.50pm half-hour slot. Anglia Television then commenced a short repeat of the first 40 or so episodes shortly after reaching the end.
Due to the content of the episodes, a substantial amount of episodes were withdrawn from transmission by certain regions as the content was considered unsuitable for daytime viewing. This led to various regions skipping considerable chunks of the story.
