Beloved British drama is getting a US remake with Emmy nominated actor set to take over iconic position
Hit ITV drama Doc Martin is set for a US remake without Martin Clunes, who played the grumpy GP for nearly two decades.
Instead Emmy nominated actor Josh Charles, famous for TV series The Handmaid’s Tale and The Good Wife, will take over as the miserable medic.
The Fox network will remake the iconic show, but set it on the east coast of the US instead of Cornwall. It will also change its name to Best Medicine.
Nevertheless Clunes, 63, who featured in all ten seasons of the primetime hit – which regularly drew in over eight million viewers – is already well known and popular in the US as the UK show is a huge hit on the PBS Network.
In the UK version – filmed in Port Isaac – Clunes plays the character of Doctor Martin Ellingham, a surgeon who quits his glittering career in London to inexplicably take up the role of GP in the fictional village of Portwenn, where he enjoyed childhood holidays.
His cold and unemotional manner alienates locals while they are impressed by his medical expertise. He gradually comes to be accepted in Portwenn as more is revealed about his past – including his phobia of blood which has blighted his stellar career.
Emmy nominated actor Josh Charles (pictured), famous for TV series The Handmaid’s Tale and The Good Wife, will take over as the miserable medic in a US remake, named Best Medicine, of the Hit ITV drama Doc Martin
In the UK version of the popular show – filmed in Port Isaac, Cornwall – Martin Clunes, 63, plays the character of Doctor Martin Ellingham (pictured), a surgeon who quits his glittering career in London to inexplicably take up the role of GP in the fictional village of Portwenn
Clunes pictured as Dr Martin Ellingham with his on-screen wife Caroline Catz as Louisa Glasson, with their baby son
In Best Medicine, the identical plot centres on Doctor Martin Best, played by Charles and described as ‘a brilliant surgeon who abruptly leaves his illustrious career in Boston to become the general practitioner in a quaint East Coast fishing village where he spent summers as a child’.
The tagline continues: ‘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.’
As fans of the original show will know, the locals don’t know that the doctor’s frosty demeanour masks a ‘debilitating new phobia and deep-seated psychological issues that prevent him from experiencing true intimacy with anyone’.
Best Medicine will mark the seventh international adaptation of the British series, which has ‘resonated worldwide with its humanity, originality and humour’, according to President of Fox Television Network Michael Thorn.
Doc Martin ran on ITV between 2004 and 2022. Clunes recently refused to reveal if he would return to the role, suggesting: ‘I’m almost at the age where a GP has to retire, you see. Eighteen years of private medicine!’
