Best Medicine: US Remake of ITV's Doc Martin Reviewed
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- Best Medicine is a US remake of ITV's Doc Martin, which was created by Dominic Minghella, ran for 10 series from 2004 to 2022, and originally starred Martin Clunes
- Josh Charles takes the lead as Dr Martin Best, a Harvard-trained vascular surgeon with a fear of blood who relocates to the fictional Port Wenn, Maine — a two-word version of the original's Cornish Portwenn
- Abigail Spencer plays love interest Louisa, a schoolteacher who has just cancelled her wedding to local sheriff Mark Mylow (Josh Segarra), setting up a will-they-won't-they dynamic familiar from the British original
- The show retains characters like handyman father-and-son Bert and Al Large (John DiMaggio, Carter Shimp) and adds new figures including a gay couple (Stephen Spinella, Jason Veasey) running the local bar and a childhood bully turned town tyrant
- The reviewer calls the show "perfect rubbish" — formulaic comfort TV lavishly executed, softer than the original with a backstory added to explain the doctor's abrasiveness, and built around weekly set pieces like a baked-bean supper and a women's wilderness-training day with a ripped instructor
- Best Medicine aired on Sky One and is available on Now
Why it matters: The reviewer flags a deliberate softening of the British original — backstory to explain away the lead's gruffness, added hugging, more sentimentality — as a conscious recalibration for American comfort-TV audiences, even as the format's medical oddities, smalltown eccentricity, and promise of 42 minutes of zero distress remain intact.
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