The week in TV: Doc Martin

Doc Martin represents one of my guiltier pleasures, in that I watch it in what I think of as my time “off”, freed from doing the serious important note-taking shtick or being asked to struggle professionally to fathom the enduring appeal of Downton. The Big Bang Theory, The Wright Stuff, reruns of Jonathan Creek or Endeavour – all are just-for-me equivalents of warm mismatched socks, a hot-water bottle and burnt bubbling cheap cheese on toast. Bliss.

So I dread the day Martin Ellingham – his surname an anagram of showrunner Dominic Minghella, is this interesting? (No, Ed.) – gets all worthy or political or even relevant, and I have to review it seriously. And, the saints be blessed, that still looks roundly unlikely from this sofa. We’re still freely invited, 11 years on and at the close of the latest series, to giggle smugly at Cornwall, and what immense fun that is. Those who have been there know that the inhabitants live in perhaps the most glorious corner of God’s green earth, and there should be payback, so we’re probably entitled to regard the Cornubian batholith as the Land That Education Forgot. Almost everyone be a moron.

Bert Large is a cunning 20-chinned moron. Son Al is a misunderstood moron. Mrs Tishell is a comedy escapee from The Archers, and a moron in italics. Sexy Morwenna is a trainee moron (yet there’s hope, and, left to her own devices, she correctly divines that 100% of those waiting for the absent doctor’s curt ministrations are slouchy malingerers or alcoholics). King Captain Moron is, of course, PC Joe, who in this final series episode managed to louse up in every way imaginable short of snagging his own pancreas in a bear-trap. Actor John Marquez deserves great credit: not since Father Dougal has there been on our screens a more credible, human, moron.

 In the end, after some relatively serious business involving the Doc’s kidnapping, serious mainly because one doesn’t ever dick about with Gemma Jones possessed of the “nice” end of a shotgun and a righteous wrath, Louisa and Martin were gently reunited. “I think I’ve been a little bit obsessed with people having to be normal. But they’re not, are they?” You said it, girl from Cornwall. Sweeter, more seriously, “I know you weren’t going to let me down,” which is very much all a girl wants. But… only sometimes. Hence the clever personal tension underwriting the relationship at the heart of this series, and which, apart from the sweet morons and Martin Clunes’s deadpan perfections, lends it its entirely fathomable appeal. More, more.

Found HERE at the Guardian.