If cozy with a shot of cranky is your prescription for feel-good TV, then Fox’s latest dramedy Best Medicine should be right up your alley. Based on Doc Martin, the U.K. hit about a churlish London medic (Martin Clunes) dealing with the quaint residents of his new seaside practice, Best Medicine was championed here in the U.S. by producer Ben Silverman (The Office, Ugly Betty). The show is an instantly likable fish-out-of-water tale, brimming with snarky humor and 100cc of sentiment. Think more Northern Exposure and Ed than House or Fox’s other medical series, Doc, starring Molly Parker.
“That kind of tone is a really tricky balance,” says Josh Charles, an Emmy nominee for The Good Wife, who affably grouses into the leading-man department as Martin Best. He’s a prickly Boston surgeon who finds himself surrounded by overly friendly small-town types. After a childhood trauma resurfaces to emotionally derail his ability to operate, the buttoned-up Best hits reset by moving to the coastal hamlet of Port Wenn, Maine, where he reluctantly reconnects with his beloved and sassy Aunt Sarah (Annie Potts), whom he hasn’t seen since med school.
“He used to spend his summers with me,” the eternally breezy Young Sheldon alum explains of their long estrangement. “But then, I was too naughty for his father. He considered me to be a bad influence and wouldn’t let him come see me anymore. So now he comes back, and he’s just difficult and curmudgeonly and cynical.”
Not exactly the bedside manner one looks for in a local doctor, but that doesn’t stop Port Wenn’s nosy, neighborly residents from trying to see, well, the best in Best… or at the very least, attempting to involve him in their personal lives, often via their varied ailments.
“A lot of times there’s going to be a medical mystery that he can’t help but want to solve, and it will always somehow drag him into the lives of the townspeople,” offers showrunner Liz Tuccillo. “So it’s not like we’re not doing House, where he figures out this crazy disease. It’s that he’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with the person while having to get involved in some shenanigans that he doesn’t want to have to get involved in.”
“In a comedic sense, from Martin’s point of view, he’s in a horror movie,” laughs Charles about the show’s premise. “This is honestly his worst nightmare, to have to just deal with people.”
Like the quirkiest of TV’s small towns, those people, “as invasive as they are, are still charming and fun,” adds executive producer Rodney Ferrell. By the end of the first hour, Martin may still be far from sold on Port Wenn’s weirdos. But he has been drawn into a patient’s unexpectedly ribald marital issues, confounded by his flaky, aspiring-influencer secretary Elaine (Cree), unofficially adopted by a stray dog, and targeted by three meme-speaking teens who hilariously “antagonize Martin throughout every episode,” Ferrell reveals. “They become his little foes.”
While Doc Martin‘s 2004 to 2022 run provides 10 seasons of story, Tuccillo and Ferrell are not interested in a cut-and-paste copy of the source material. “This is an amazing opportunity to steal whatever we want from the original — because we were allowed to — but then also make it our own,” Tuccillo states. (To that end, they recruited O.G. star Clunes to pass the torch with a guest role as Martin’s chilly father. Stage vet Judith Ivey plays his mom.) One aspect of the British version still intact, however, is the central will-they-or-won’t-they situation between Martin and schoolteacher Louisa (Abigail Spencer) that fires up in the pilot’s opening minutes.
Francisco Roman / Fox
“They start off very much on the wrong foot,” Spencer notes of their anti-meet-cute. “She thinks that he’s rude and arrogant and not telling the whole truth and not a right fit for Port Wenn.” Fresh off a broken engagement to sweetly dim Sheriff Mark (Josh Segarra), Louisa is also intrigued by the socially brash but brilliant Best, setting the stage for an odd coupling that the Timeless favorite likens to “the flavor of all the great ’80s and ’90s rom-coms I love.”
Winning over the citizens of Port Wenn is one thing. Whether or not audiences will fall for this potential combo depends a lot on that tricky balance Charles mentioned of making sure his version of Martin comes off as a grouch with a gooey center. “We love the acerbic-ness of him. It’s part of his character, it’s part of his charm,” offers Ferrell. “But deep down inside, he cares about these people. He cares about their well-being, and, like we said, they grow on him.”
Charles agrees. “I think you do see his humanity in his actions at certain times. You see these glimpses of it. He has a big heart,” he says. If it were anyone else, we’d suggest seeing a doctor about that.
Best Medicine, Tuesday, 8/7c, Fox
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