Here’s how you can watch The Rookie in Australia

Police crime dramas – Police Procedurals if you want to get all fancy about it – have been a staple of TV drama for decades now. As such, coming up with a fresh spin on the concept is quite the task. That’s just what The Rookie does. Set in the Los Angeles Police Department, as the title suggests, it covers the challenges faced by an LAPD rookie – but this is a rookie with a difference, because he’s no fresh-faced cadet. Instead, he’s a 45-year old recruit.

The Rookie is a US-produced series developed for the ABC – that’s the American Broadcasting Company – that is available to stream on the free (but ad-supported) 7plus network. All five seasons of The Rookie are available to stream, as is the spinoff series, The Rookie Feds.

If ad-supported isn’t your style, it’s also available to buy through Apple, Google Play or Microsoft for digital devices.

At the time of writing, The Rookie's sixth season hasn't made it to Australia. There's no doubt it will arrive eventually, but for the time being your best bet might be to use a VPN to watch The Rookie's sixth season on Hulu. 

Right now, the five seasons of The Rookie that have been released locally are all available to stream on 7plus as is The Rookie Feds series.

The Rookie Season Six suffered serious setbacks after the combined writers' and actors' strikes of 2023 but it evenutally premiered in the US in early 2024. Despite this, there still isn't an option to stream season six officially in Australia. Currently, your best option for watching season six of The Rookie in Australia is by using a VPN to watch it through Hulu (or tracking down the episodes through other means.) Here are a few VPNs that work well with Hulu in our experience. 

The Rookie follows the trials and tribulations of a new recruit to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), with the primary twist being that this isn’t a young recruit, but instead a 45 year old man, John Nolan. Following the collapse of his marriage and a bank robbery, Nolan moves to LA, inspired to make it as a police officer.

Over the course of five seasons to date, Nolan’s worked his way up from being the unlikely rookie on the force to a member of the department in reasonably good standing – though with dramatic needs in mind, the path to his desired role has been far from smooth sailing, and he’s had to face more than his fair share of hard decisions about his future, without spoiling too much.

While it might sound like The Rookie is a work of pure fiction, it’s based on the reality that the LAPD is one of the few US police departments that will take in trainee officers at older ages than in most jurisdictions. The real-world inspiration for The Rookie serves as a consultant and executive producer on the show.

As the streaming arm of the Seven network, 7plus primarily serves as a catchup system for existing Channel 7 programming first and foremost. Seven has the rights to a lot of very popular shows in Australia – which is a big part of the reason why the network itself rates so well – as well as a number of imported programs, including The Rookie – and also the Canadian series, Rookie Blue, though the two series are not connected.

As such, the fair comparison is more between other catch-up TV services such as ABC iView, SBS On Demand, 10Play and 9Now, rather than paid streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video.