A Rescue show/game/movie focuses on The Team of heroic professional Emergency Services personnel who specialize in helping people and animals when trapped in dangerous situations in the field. The danger could be fire, drowning, an avalanche, a climber trapped on a cliff, a victim with severe injuries, or a missing/sinking boat.
Typically, the story formula often shows the development of the emergency, which turns into a life and death crisis that regular police and ambulances can't help with; no unit can save the victims but the elite rescue force.
They in turn usually are alerted to an Alarm SOS at their base and then rush to an Emergency Squad Scramble with dramatic, bombastic theme music playing as they board their vehicles (or helicopters/planes/boats) and race to the rescue. Expect a Cool Car, Cool Boat, Cool Plane or Big Badass Rig for their rescue vehicle/truck (or boat/plane) tricked out with flashing lights, sirens, and specialized rescue equipment.
The Team will have The Captain, a strong, confident leader and under them, a hierarchical Command Roster, including The Medic, several rescuers, a Communications Officer and a Badass Driver (or Ace Pilot).
They arrive just in time (possibly Fast-Roping from a chopper) to do a Crisis Catch And Carry and help the victims. Sometimes there is seemingly no way to save one of the victims. The fire/waves/fumes are too intense and the rescue is too dangerous...Then The Captain orders that No One Gets Left Behind and the Badass Crew swoops in for a risky, death-defying rescue. If the victim is seriously injured and needs life-saving medical intervention immediately, the rescuers may have to Roadside Surgery on site.
Although these series are expensive to stage with all the fires, explosions, helicopters and location shooting (unless you use puppets or animation), they have the advantage that, during times of moral panics on media violence, they're action shows where the heroes save people instead of killing bad guys.
Examples include:
- 240-Robert
- Baywatch
- Brave Firefighters
- Burning Rangers
- Chicago Fire
- Code Blue
- Code Red
- Dinosaur Expedition Born Free
- Emergency! — The Ur-Example and Trope Codifier
- Fire Country
- Fire Force - though a bit of a stretch.
- Five Minutes Of Silence is a Russian series about a team of EMERCOM rescuers based in Karelia (a Russian republic bordering Finland), specifically Unit 4221, under the command of Major Gireyev.
- High Mountain Rangers
- Kyūkyū Sentai GoGoV
- Its adaptation Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue
- Machine Robo Rescue
- Medicopter 117, a German example.
- 9-1-1
- PAW Patrol
- Planes: Fire & Rescue
- Promare
- Police Rescue, an Australian example.
- Rescue 911
- Rescue Heroes
- The Rescue Mission Trilogy in the Metal Heroes franchise:
- Rescue Special Ops
- Search And Rescue
- Thirteen Lives
- Thunderbirds
- Third Watch - With a bit of Police Procedural, increasingly so as the show goes on
- Tomica Hero Rescue Force
- Tomica Hyper Rescue Drive Head Kidou Kyuukyuu Keisatsu
- Transformers: Rescue Bots
- Yomigaeru Sora — Rescue Wings
