AVS Discussions
Movie and TV Discussion => TV series => Topic started by: Barry on October 19, 2026, 01:24:21 PM
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Twelfth Night: “One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons, / A natural perspective that is and is not!"
Doc Martin was a unique TV show, filmed in Great Britain, that began in 2004 and had 10 seasons over the next 18 years. In America, it was broadcast often on PBS, but I had to get the disks to see the episodes in order and completely. It is available on 6 DVDs and then four Blu-rays..
This was a dramatic show that had many comic moments in it. The premise of the show is that Doc Martin was a surgeon in Great Britain who develops a fear of blood. They actually under play how serious this could be. I know because I have the same phobia and it’s much harder to live with.
No longer able to do surgery he is assigned to the small town that he visited every summer with his aunt, Port Winn, just a beautiful place. Of course, this is a TV show so the inhabitants of the village are always a bit quirky but fun to watch.
What Doc Martin is an unusual character. He has very little social skills and keeps very much to himself. After the first season, you’ll never see him smile and he will always be dressed in a suit. His personality is very similar to what we would see in Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory.
Doc, Martin proves to be an incredible diagnostician and is able to recognize many rare and incredibly abstract diseases that no one else knows about.
Martin Clunes: "Lots of people say that he is Aspergic or something to some degree—which, yes, I think he is."He has also said, "He's wired the way he's wired, but growing up being loathed by both your parents is going to leave a footprint. That's why he's so dysfunctional with relationships, 'cause there's gaps in his makeup. A sad little boy in there comes out a lot, and that's what a lot of that frowning is."
I don’t know how this exactly works in Great Britain where they have socialized medicine, but he seems to be more of a government employee than an individual contractor that he would be in America. As a result, he is often assigned people who will evaluate him and even replace him. In every case, the supervisors were totally incompetent.
Quite serious, was Doc Martin’s relationship with his mother and father. While his father was distant and selfish, his mother was unbelievably horrible. Often telling him that he ruined her life just being born. They sent him away to private schools and he spent the summer with his aunt, they wanted no time with him.
A running joke: Martin Clunes is a animal and dog lover in real life. He has done documentary on them. But every episode of Doc Martin we have a scene where our dog is attracted to him and he tries to get rid of them.
But we get to see 18 years of his life where he grows, gets married and has his own children. He slowly adopts the town and they slowly adopt . As arrogant as he may seem, he always puts people first . And the last episode, a Christmas special, actually gives some very good and important guidance. I enjoyed this very much.
“Best Medicine” is the American remake of Doc Martin. This is a much softer version which is more of a sitcom than it is of a drama. In the original the villagers were a bit quirky, here they are much more diverse and much wackier. They often speak in punchlines and often have typical sitcom sub plots. And this doc Martin is not as serious and as isolated as the original.
The episodes also borrow heavily from the original, but are never as serious. I mention the relationship to the original’s parents because when they present that episode in Best Medicine, the father, played by Martin Clunes, is never very tough, and the mother is virtually ignored. So none of the hardness of the original is brought to this show.
Very interesting, is that Annie Potts, who played the grandmother of Sheldon from Big Bang now plays the aunt of Doc Martin Best.
I really enjoyed Doc, Martin and give it a ‘very high good’ rating. For those of us who saw the original, I think Best Medicine would get just a “good” rating, because we have seen original done better. But for those who haven’t seen the original Doc Martin, I suspect they would rate it higher.
Sadly, the first six seasons are only available on DVDs. They actually look good, not great, and take away the color and the sharpness of a beautiful England village near the sea. The four remaining seasons are on Blu-ray and the town comes alive on these discs. It’s just a beautiful seaport that you would love to visit. The skin colors are wonderful and the last four disks just have beautiful episodes. The audio is also very . The dialog is very clear and you feel that you’re in the town. In the bonus features, they show visitors coming to the set and so many of them bring their dogs to get a picture with Martin Clunes.
Oh, by the way, my favorite scene in the new Best Medicine, has Martin Clunes walking down the street with his son, the new Doc Martin, and just like in the original, out of nowhere, a dog runs up to him wanting to be petted. It was wonderful.