A new Doc Martin is headed to television as Josh Charles (The Good Wife) has been cast as Dr. Martin Best in Fox’s Best Medicine, an American adaptation of the British TV series Doc Martin. That predecessor series might not ring a bell if you’re not a PBS viewer, but it was a big hit across the pond.
Doc Martin starred Martin Clunes as Dr. Martin Ellingham, a surgeon who moves from big-city London to small-town Portwenn, a seaside village in Cornwall, after developing a fear of blood. Martin becomes a general practitioner in Portwenn, where his new neighbors call him “Doc Martin” and don’t understand his businesslike (read: unfriendly) demeanor. In spite of himself, however, Martin finds community in his new home.
The series — which, in turn, was inspired by a similar character Clunes played in the 2000 film Saving Grace and two TV prequel movies — aired for 10 seasons and one TV movie on ITV between 2004 and 2022. The cast also included Caroline Catz as Portwenn primary school teacher Louisa Glasson, Ian McNeice and Joe Absolom as enterprising father-and-son duo Bert and Al Large, and John Marquez as policeman Joe Penhale.
British producer and screenwriter Dominic Minghella — whose last name is an anagram of Ellingham, you’ll notice — developed Doc Martin at Clunes’ invitation. “Martin Clunes hired me,” Minghella said on the Greenhills Podcast in 2022. “So it would have been quite strange to say Martin shouldn’t be in it.”
Still, Minghella had reservations about working on a TV show starring the “cuddly” Clunes — whom he called “that lovely one from [the British sitcom] Men Behaving Badly” — since he worried such a production would be “too sweet” and not suited for a one-hour comedy-drama.
“So I thought, wouldn’t it be a thing if Martin was nasty?” he recalled. “You know, just make him really unlikable and brusque and not at all [like a character] you’ve seen him play before. And that really worked, and [Clunes] really loved that idea.”
So did viewers, 10.37 million of whom were tuning in by Doc Martin’s third season, according to the London Standard. The series also won the British Comedy Award for Best TV Comedy Drama in 2004, and Clunes won three TV Choice Awards for Best Actor.
Acorn TV
Now the story will be adapted for an American audience with Best Medicine, a one-hour comedy series Fox ordered for its 2025–2026 season.
Charles will play Martin Best, a brilliant Boston surgeon who turns small-town doctor when he abruptly abandons his career behind to become a general practitioner in the same quaint East Coast fishing village where he spent summers as a child, according to the logline.
“Unfortunately, Martin’s blunt and borderline rude bedside manner rubs the quirky, needy locals the wrong way, and he quickly alienates the town, even though he’s all they’ve got,” the logline adds.
The village locals don’t know that Martin’s prickly personality hides a new phobia and old psychological issues. “But tenacity is the creed of everyone in their small village, and the people who live there may be exactly what the doctor ordered,” the logline says.
“The story of Doc Martin has resonated worldwide with its humanity, originality, and humor, and with Best Medicine coming to Fox, that eccentricity gets a small-town America spin, complete with idyllic charm and absurdity,” Fox president Michael Thorn said in a press release.
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