Well, what in the cultural cringe is going on here? Of all the things I could possibly have imagined the US would take an interest in to the point of executing a straight-to-series commission, Doc Martin would not have been one of them. And yet here we are: Dominic Minghella’s creation, starring Martin Clunes as a crotchety GP in the fictional sleepy Cornish village Portwenn, which ran for 10 series on ITV between 2004 and 2022, has been tweaked for a new market and relabelled Best Medicine because it never really worked as a pun on Dr Martens anyway. Like 99% of puns, actually, but that’s probably a discussion for another time.
Clunes is now Josh Charles. The character’s name is Dr Martin Best instead of Ellingham, otherwise the new title wouldn’t work, and he went to Harvard medical school instead of Imperial College London. But he is still cantankerous – by medical teatime drama standards, which is to say that he barely approaches normal human levels of irritability. And he is still a vascular surgeon who developed a fear of blood, had to abandon surgery and decided instead to inflict his lack of bedside manner on the good people of Port Wenn, now two words and in Maine, where he used to stay in the summer as a child.
His love interest remains the saintly local schoolteacher Louisa (Abigail Spencer), but this is complicated by the fact that she has recently cancelled her wedding to the local sheriff, Mark Mylow (Josh Segarra), having realised, perhaps, that she can, and should, probably do better. Louisa has spent time in New York, but knows that smalltown life suits her better. I wonder if she will help open Dr Best’s eyes to its charms, too?
Most of the other turns – more than in the original it feels like a reach to call them characters – are present, too, providing eccentricity, charm and plotlines in roughly equal proportions. Father and son handyman duo Bert (John DiMaggio) and Al Large (Carter Shimp) have, respectively, health problems for the good doctor to investigate and an unrequited love for Best’s internet-obsessed receptionist, Elaine (Cree). Pharmacist-in-a-neck-brace Sally Tishall has become Mark’s mother, Sally Mylow (Clea Lewis, stealing all her scenes), there is a dog who forcibly adopts Best, an Aunt Sarah (Annie Potts) instead of an Aunt Joan (who lobster fishes instead of farms) and a strewing of medical mysteries that never threaten any real harm every episode.
The new team has added a gay couple, Greg (Stephen Spinella) and George (Jason Veasey), who run the bar and restaurant that forms the backdrop to the many town events that keep the community together, and a childhood bully of Best’s who has grown up to be the local tyrant. I wonder if old scores will be settled?
Charles is fine as the tetchy doctor with a heart of gold. It’s not his usual beat – smooth sophistication is what he’s best known for, thanks to his long stint as Alicia’s potential-then-actual lover in The Good Wife, though anyone who has seen Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt knows he can make it fantastically comic, too – and you have to have a generous attitude not to wonder if the part couldn’t have been better cast. But Best Medicine encourages generosity. This is formulaic television lavishly done, skimping on none of the required whimsy, medical nonsense (gynocomastia caused by unstinting use of oestrogen cream, glaucoma diagnosed at a glance), mild complications or set pieces (the baked bean supper Best wants to cancel when there is a highly contagious disease in town, an annual day when all the women get to do wilderness training in the forest with an extremely ripped tutor).
Best Medicine is softer than Doc Martin. Best, for example, is given a backstory to explain away his abrasiveness where the original was let stand, and there is more hugging and learning than any Briton would tolerate. But it does exactly what it sets out to do – soothe viewers’ souls with a celebration of smalltown values, of the secret goodness hidden behind even the prickliest of men and the promise that nothing for the next 42 minutes plus ads will distress us. It’s perfect rubbish and we need it very much.
