A NEW Australian cop show which is set in a country town is bound to have resonances from elsewhere: `A Country Practice', of course, and `Cop Shop', not to mention the British series `Heartbeat'. So if `Blue Heelers' (Channel 7, 7.30pm), doesn't look startlingly fresh and innovative, that's not so surprising. It is drawing on familiar models and on a long-standing nostalgia for what are perceived to be the crisp, cut-and-dried issues of rural life on the screen.

But there is a disruptive element: a young female police officer from the city who doesn't intend to be patronised and who takes every available opportunity to make the point.

Perky Constable Maggie Doyle (Lisa McCune) arrives at her new posting, Mount Thomas, in country Victoria. She's not in uniform, and her first meeting with her colleagues is slightly inauspicious: she is subjected to a breathalyser-and-banter routine from the suave-toned P.J. (Martin Sacks), backed up by the impassive Nick (William McInnes).

Maggie produces her police ID and sets them straight: it looks as if this will be her principal activity for some weeks to come. There are likely to be an awful lot of men in Mount Thomas who need to be taught that they can't call young women ``girlie''.

The force has been with Maggie in all sorts of ways. Her father and brothers are cops: her new boss, Sergeant Croydon (John Wood), worked with her father, and one of her Mount Thomas colleagues turns out to be an ex-boyfriend from Police Academy days. Wayne (Grant Bowler) _ who once carried Maggie's picture in his wallet _ is now married to Roz (Ann Burbrook) who is not too thrilled to find that the duties of the lock-up keeper's wife include having to clean the cells. We also meet Chris (Julie Nihill), the easy-going but forthright publican of the Imperial Hotel.

It's a combination of light-hearted and heavy-handed scene-setting, with mixed results. Maggie's extremely high reading on the feistiness scale is established beyond doubt after the first seven minutes, but it's underlined virtually every moment she is on the screen.

Even before she reports for her first day on duty, she finds herself involved in police work. A young woman is bashed and raped by her boyfriend: Maggie is involved in taking her statement and getting her to hospital.

This first episode emphasises, in a self-conscious way, the difficulties men have in dealing with women, particularly in the workplace. Several of the female characters refer ruefully to a world in which a ``boy's club'' calls the shots.

Maggie is prepared to take on this club at every opportunity _ backed up, of course, by her uniform. When she's not dealing with her colleagues, this gives her a certain power. How many women, after all, can respond to a wolf-whistle in the street by pointing out to the offending male that he had better get his bald tyres fixed within 24 hours or else? The sexual assault case has a particular context: it is over- determined by what else happens in this busy first episode. It's as if the rape is at one end of a spectrum and calling women ``girlie'' is at the other end. It's not clear whether this is writer Tony Morphett's intention, but the significance of the event seems to be bound up with Maggie's outspokenness, and her confrontation with the rapist in the pub only underlines this point.

The incident also seems to be a test or a challenge for several of the characters _ will Maggie's male colleagues respond to the incident in an acceptable way? Will the boy's club close ranks? Is Maggie's feisty approach towards the rape victim too overbearing?