Doctor Down Under

- Season 1

(1979)

Duncan is working in St. Barnabas hospital, Sydney, under fearsome Professor Beaumont and alongside the Australian answer to Bingham, Maurice Griffin. Dick Stuart-Clark is admitted as an amnesia sufferer, though this is a ploy, as he skipped St Swithins having sold off oxygen cylinders and is wanted in Sydney for not paying his hotel bill. Duncan takes him to see Beaumont about a job but before any deal can be reached Griffin, whose patient Dick is, has shoved a syringe full of sedatives up his bottom and knocked him cold.

Still unemployed, Dick parties till all hours, causing Duncan to be late for an operation and throw up on the theatre sister. Duncan decides it's time his friend got a job and makes him fill in the application form. Dick, a reluctant interviewee, does his best to get on the wrong side of chief anaesthetist Wilkinson, but the man loves his cavalier attitude and gives him a job.

Dick and Duncan both want to take physiotherapist Pamela Kincaid to a weekend beach party. Duncan plans to get Dick out of the way by sending him to a conference but Dick 'persuades' a philandering patient to take his place. When the man's wife turns up at St. Barnabas to see him, a heavily bandaged Duncan impersonates him, but his efforts to avoid Professor Beaumont leave Dick free to act as escort to Pamela.

Retired jockey 'Chalky' White is on Duncan's ward. Whilst Sister Cummings misunderstands their conversation about horses, 'Chalky' persuades Duncan to invest in a race horse, Moonboggler, and Dick goes half shares with him. When the horse goes lame the doctors plan to put him for stud but unfortunately too much sex makes him go dizzy.

Dick's latest money-making scheme is a raffle with a trip to Hawaii as the main prize. Griffin wins it but goes down with a 'mysterious' illness and can't make it so Beaumont, who has bought most of the tickets, demands there is a second draw. The winner is Duncan but the trip is cancelled because the travel agent with whom Dick arranged it has been arrested for fraud.

When Dick hears that Duncan might be moving his new girl-friend, Sister Potts, into the flat, he fears for his tenancy. After becoming a responsible doctor at work and waiting on Duncan at home, he concocts a story that he is engaged to fearsome Sister Fletcher, and wants her to move in but offers to break it off if Duncan gives up his girl-friend. Actually Sister Fletcher is unaware that she has just got engaged but soon will be as Duncan plans his revenge on Dick.

An attractive young lady out-patient asks Dick and Duncan to her fancy dress party, where her 'costume' will be Lady Godiva. Duncan plans to go as a witch-doctor but Griffin, who has been reading a book on head-hunters of Borneo, mishears him ordering his costume and assumes that a witch-doctor is working in the hospital. He tells Beaumont, who believes he is over-doing it and sends him home, asking Duncan to replace him. Arriving in costume Duncan frightens the out-patients.

As a pre-cursor to a visit to St. Barnabas by the Minister of Health, his underlings are shown around and get the wrong impression when they walk in on Dick advising Griffin on how to chat up Nurse Pettigrew. When the Minister turns up to watch an operation, Duncan has inadvertently got drunk, Dick is listening to the races and Griffin makes an awkward entrance on a trolley with Nurse Pettigrew. When the three doctors are sent for for a carpeting, Dick and Duncan discover it's good to have friends in high places.

Professor Beaumont receives a letter from Sir Geoffrey claiming that Duncan owes two thousand pounds in gambling debts back in Britain. In fact the culprit is Dick, who has used Duncan's name and Duncan threatens to have him extradited unless he clears the matter up. Dick goes to the bank to collect the money but blows it at the races, earning a thump from Duncan. Beaumont agrees to take the money out of Dick's salary but Dick finds out that he is not the only one to use another's name in vain.

Professor Beaumont is angry that the patients have been complaining about the three doctors, even Griffin, whose lengthy descriptions of operations have induced nausea and all must behave themselves. Unfortunately Griffin gets into a spat with a cantankerous old man, Dick is caught on the fiddle and Duncan gets a thump from a seven foot muscle man whose car he damaged earlier in the day. Duncan is relieved when the day is over - until he drives into Beaumont's car.

Dick and Duncan urge Professor Beaumont to have a day off, but Dick leaves Duncan in the lurch when he joins a friend on his boat, The Sydney Surprise. Duncan goes to find him but Griffin rings Professor Beaumont and sends him to the boat on a supposed emergency. The two doctors are found out - but so is the professor when a rich widow also on board turns out to be his bit on the side.

When Professor Beaumont asks to use the doctors' flat for the afternoon, Duncan assumes it's to entertain his bit on the side and when Griffin overhears Duncan tell Dick, he is only too happy to lead the professor's wife to the flat. In fact the young lady in question is the professor's niece, whom he is helping with her exams, but Beaumont doesn't want his wife to find out, so when Dick arrives with his card school, Beaumont joins in. Soon Mrs. Beaumont has taken his place and is winning money from everybody at the table.

The animosity between Duncan and Maurice Griffin intensifies when Griffin gets slapped by a nurse's irate mother after she is told he is Duncan. Both doctors squabble over who should have priority in the operating theatre with their respective patients but it appears they have mixed the patients up and performed an operation on a man who does not need one. In fact the orderlies mixed up the name tags but Professor Beaumont allows the doctors to believe they are in the wrong so that he can transfer them - and Stuart-Clark - to Casualty.