Martin Clunes stars in Doc Martin an ITV series that started in 2007. It's still going on but I hear that the as yet unmade seventh series is going to be the last. The series started in a round about way, Martin played a similar doctor in Saving Grace back in 2000. That character had a couple of prequels on the defunct British Sky Broadcasting. That company closed down and the show got cancelled. The character got re-imagined for ITV by Dominic Minghella who was the creator, and show runner, of the 2006 BBC Robin Hood series. I thought it was an abysmal show and could barely finish the first series. It's so absolutely not Robin Hood that Minghella needed to get slapped. He gets a few good marks for Doc Martin but the RH stank still burns my nasal passages. I see on the Wikipedia that there are 7 different foreign Doc Martin versions. I haven't seen any of them but I'm curious.
The new Doc Martin has an aversion to blood and he goes from being a leading surgeon in London to being a GP in Portwenn, Cornwall. It's actually shot in Port Isaac and it's a really pretty place. This Doc Martin is a crabbier guy than the other Doc Martin. He's a good doctor but he's abrasive and lacks those social skills that lead to having a nice bedside manner. Perfect for a surgeon in London but not so much for the people in Portwenn. They don't accept him any more than he does them. His aunt lives in the town and he'd visited her when he was a kid. He stopped going there years ago for various family reasons that are revealed later. Lucy Punch plays the Doc's receptionist. She's terrible at her job but being a little town in a TV show she gets to stay, even after being fired. Lucy will leave the show at the end of the first series.
There's a romantic interest in Caroline Catz. It takes a while to get going but by the end of the 1st series they have come to like each other a fair bit. Ian McNeice plays a local plumber. The writing is fairly fun and the show moves along rather quickly. There's a bit of drama that gets defused with heaps of comedy. I certainly prefer it to House which I thought was absolutely bleak and uninteresting. I barely could get through an episode of that program. Doc Martin is more fun and I'm going to get the rest of the series from the library.
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