Johnson doesn’t watch Ten’s Ambulance Australia, and jokes, “I assume that it’s inferior … That’s just from a production perspective. The ambos, no doubt, are brilliant”. But he says that, now, more than ever, these programs, in addition to Nine’s Emergency, are a reminder of the precious nature of health services.

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“These people train half of their lives to combat some of the most complex problems that we face, but the system is under a lot of pressure, and good people are going, and their knowledge banks are going with them,” he says. “So the question, for me, is, in another 40 years, is there still going to be a Medicare? And this show explores those questions.”

He puts part of the appeal of medical emergency shows down to “rubbernecking”.

“When you drive past an accident, even though you don’t want to see the blood, you still look,” he says. “But if you ask me, it’s not so much the technical stuff as the humanism … It’s the moment between life and death itself, and you’ve got all that love in there. People are overwrought with the mere thought of losing their loved ones.

“The amount of naked love that you see in people’s eyes is what made me want this job so bad after I had my accident. Because we all crave that connection and we all, in our final hour, want to know, were we loved and did we love well? In Paramedics, you see people go through all that and that’s why it’s laugh-and-cry material.”

Paramedics returns on Sunday, April 15, on Nine, the owner of this masthead.

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