Country GP - Episode 22

Scar tissue heals. God knows how the mind does.

– GP David Miller (Lani Tupu) ruminates on the mental scars of war

Old time's sake? Nah mate, they've gone. There's just the future now.

– Returned soldier Joe Ashton (Simon O'Connor) refuses a toast to the "good old days"

It's that youth club of yours . . . they need a good dose of the army to buck up their ideas.

– Old Ted (Roy Wesney) complains to Vicar Elwood (Patrick Smyth), early in this episode

Today in this very room I saw hatred: undisguised, unadulterated hatred, and I am ashamed. Ashamed that it took me so long to realise what was going on in this valley. Ashamed of my part in it. I have heard myself condemn the barbarous actions of the Japanese, and I have hated them for the way they treated our boys, I've heard acts of vengeance being discussed, and I condoned it . . . if our enemy can not be forgiven, how can we?

– Vicar Elwood (Patrick Smyth) delivers a hard-hitting sermon on post war race 'hatred'

You know I've always thought of myself as a christian. But if I met one of those Japanese guards...

– Nurse Brenda (May Lloyd) reacts after seeing the whip wounds suffered by Joe (Simon O'Connor)

Tell her I'm married already . . . but I'll throw the wife out on the street if only you'll say the word, Mrs Pratley...

– Charlie Wong (Peter Chin) jokes with Mrs Pratley (Alice Fraser), early in this episode

Despite its appetite for stories and ability to exhaust production personnel who struggled to keep up with its fast turn-around, there was plenty of scope for Country GP beyond the 70 episodes produced. Although it did not equal the popularity of Close to Home or of Mortimer's Patch at their peak, it nevertheless achieved a consistent following. Averaging 20 per cent of viewers in a lengthy season . . . it out-rated other local drama series screened during that time. Given its stronger emphasis on female characters than other local dramas, its leisurely pace and its emphasis on social issues rather than action, it was not surprising that its core audience was women aged 40 plus.

– Author Trisha Dunleavy on audience figures for the show, in her 2005 book Ourselves in Primetime, page 173

The atmosphere of the 1940s is so well captured that it might have been uncorked from a bottle in storage since August 1945.

– TV reviewer Barry Shaw on Country GP, The NZ Herald, 3 March 1984