Newton’s Law. My Life is Murder. Playing for Keeps. Les Norton. Between Two Worlds. Bad Mothers. Bite Club. Launching a new Australian television drama is not for the fainthearted. Undercut by streaming services and overwhelmed by reality television franchises, the free to air networks do their best to create shows that might carve out an audience and earn an actual second season. Few do.

Aside from the fact that everyone associated with Doctor Doctor deserves a medal for getting the wry rural drama renewed for a fifth go-around, the high mortality rate for scripted debuts explains why series with a successful history keep reappearing. In recent years The Doctor Blake Mysteries, SeaChange, Underbelly, Packed to the Rafters, and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries have all been revisited or rebooted, sometimes with tenuous justification. A track record, whatever the era, is an insurance policy for those pitching to programmers.

The latest revival is Halifax f.p., which has returned as Halifax: Retribution close to two decades after it last aired; there are viewers now eligible to vote who weren’t yet born when Rebecca Gibney’s forensic psychiatrist, Jane Halifax, last assessed an accused. It’s unproven if such a lengthy gap makes nostalgia potent for an ageing audience or tweaks the curiosity of newcomers but it has led to a watchable if sometimes ungainly show.

Retribution starts as if it’s making up for lost time. A frequently silhouetted sniper is shooting people on the streets and spaces adjacent to Melbourne’s Yarra River, and the demands of a growing emergency are making characters deliver boilerplate dialogue. “I need results and I need them now,” Victoria’s fictional premier tells police task force boss Ted Saracen (Anthony LaPaglia), who in turn tries to bring Halifax back to the beat after years in academia with the exhortation that, “Jane, you’re the best there is”.