Doc Martin - Series 7 on ABC in AUSTRALIA - Finally!!

Recently renewed UK drama Doc Martin is finally back for its seventh season on ABC next month.
It moves from Saturday to Sunday nights from 7:40pm February 7.

In the first episode Martin is in Portwenn, but his wife Louisa is not. After their tumultuous time last series, Louisa has gone to visit her mother in Spain: she wants some time to think and to get some perspective on their relationship. Martin is faced with two questions: will Louisa come back
to him, and what can he do to make sure that she does? He knows he needs to change for the sake of his marriage, and has promised Louisa he will see a therapist in order to help him do so.

Found HERE at TV Tonight.

‘Doc Martin’s’ Martin Clunes on His Character’s Season 7 Arc: ‘We Never Want to Cure Him’

The doctor is in, once again. Season seven of fan-beloved British dramedy “Doc Martin” makes its U.S. debut on Thursday, and star Martin Clunes is excited for his American fans to see what’s in store for the dwellers of Portwenn in the episodes to come.

Clunes stars as the grouchy Dr. Martin Ellingham on the ITV series, bringing his medical services to a sleepy Cornish town after he must leave his post as a top London surgeon when he develops a fear of blood. Season six ended on a question mark as Ellingham’s beloved Louisa (played by Caroline Catz) and their baby were headed for Spain without him.

Calling in from his home in Dorset, Clunes spoke to Variety about the future of the series, the (vast) difference between the show’s British fans and its American ones, and whether Doc’s rudeness ever goes too far.

Season seven of “Doc Martin” makes its U.S. network debut Jan. 14. Southern California residents can find “Doc Martin” at 8 p.m. on KCET.

Doc has been on quite an emotional trip through the first six seasons. After that cliffhanger, what can we expect for his emotional state?
 
He’s in a bad place at the end of season six. When we meet him, he’s really lonely, really sad, but aware that he needs to make a change. With the help of his aunt, he’s got enough self-awareness to know that he needs some kind of therapy. But he’s sort of in denial about that because it doesn’t sit well with his beliefs. I start seeing a therapist, who quite soon asks if she can meet Louisa as well.

What did you think when you got that script?
 
We have to be medically accurate in this country. If you’re going to put it on the TV, it has to be correct procedurally. We hired a therapist who was a friend of one of our producers to sit in and have discussions with the writers. She turned out to be a fan of the show. She said, “Never mind him getting therapy. What about her?”

We just knew that Caroline would enjoy playing that. “What do you mean me?” Sure enough, they were a real joy to play, all the therapy scenes, both with and without Caroline.

Keep reading HERE at Variety.

Martin Clunes (aka Doc Martin) Proves That Laughter Is, Indeed, the Best Medicine

Having lived a good deal of my young life in Devon and Cornwall in southwest England, I was immediately drawn to a quirky television show on KCET called “Doc Martin.” In this outstanding comedy/drama, the beautiful and almost idyllic fishing village is really one of the main characters along with the protagonist, Doctor Martin Ellingham. Now about to launch season seven, this side of the pond, Martin Clunes (Doc Martin) took a few minutes to talk with us about the zany, albeit, brilliant buffoon of a doctor.

What makes this irritating doctor so bloody marvelous? That depends on who you ask. But for this reporter, it is just plain brilliant acting and writing, combined with a dash of cheekiness, all baked carefully into one a scrumptious Cornish pasty.

“Doc Martin” is a catchy comedy/drama that stars Clunes (“Men Behaving Badly”) as Martin Ellingham, whose truculence and tactless manner causes mayhem in a small Cornish community. The series details the trials and tribulations of the brash Ellingham, once a celebrated London surgeon who left his job after developing a phobia to blood. After retraining as a general practitioner, he gets a job in the beautiful but sleepy village of Portwenn, replacing their deceased local doctor – but his abrasive personality does not exactly mesh with the pace of the Cornish Village where time has stood still since the 15th Century … that is, until now.

Beacon Media (BM): Are you surprised by the global popularity of “Doc Martin?”

Martin Clunes (MC): We were really surprised and delighted to see so many countries embrace “Doc Martin.”

BM: When you are shooting in Port Isaac, Cornwall, how long are you there?

MC: Well we are there generally about five and a half months and I always pop home to the farm on Fridays for the weekend to be with my wife and daughter in Dorset.

BM: The incredibly quirky characters absolutely make the show and the writing is brilliant.
This year “Downton Abbey” has a float in the Rose Parade … any chance we may see a “Doc Martin/Portwenn Float” in a future Rose Parade here in Pasadena?

MC: What is “Downton Abbey,” never heard of it (laughing)? Actually, I had never really thought of it but I would not rule it out. That is funny.

BM: Season seven is rumored to be the last, is this true?

MC: No, definitely not. We are having way too much fun in Cornwall. I just love it there.

Keep reading HERE at Pasadena Independent.

Producer promises more to come from ‘Doc Martin’ beyond new season

Dr. Martin Ellingham, that blood-phobic, irascible village physician, isn’t done insulting his patients just yet. Season 7 of Doc Martin, premiering in January on public television, won’t be the last.

“There are lots of stories we want to explore, and we want to do them well,” series producer Philippa Braithwaite, wife of star Martin Clunes, told Current. “I think we’ll know when it’s time to end the show.”

That’s great news for fans, so crazy for the hit Britcom that they call themselves “Clunatics.”
Their passion for the quirky characters that populate the fictional English fishing village of Portwenn has catapulted the title to multiple adaptations worldwide: In Austria, there’s Der Bergdoktor; the Netherlands, Dokter Tinus. 

A U.S. version for commercial TV is now in the works, from Executive Producer Marta Kauffman (Friends, Grace and Frankie).

But fans — as well as the cast and crew — are constantly playing a nervous guessing game as to when the original British series could end.

New episodes are filmed every other year from March through July in scenic Port Isaac, a sleepy burg in Cornwall. On its home network of ITV, Doc Martin remains the highest-rated Monday show outside of longtime soap operas.

Braithwaite said each season is created so that it could be the last. “We never know when we finish if we will make another” season, she said, “so we finish deliberately so we could leave it right there.”

She admitted that Season 6 was the exception. Viewers were left with an emotional cliffhanger: Martin’s frustrated wife Louisa (played by Caroline Catz) had retreated to Spain with their infant son James to visit her mother, with no planned return date. Martin was left to wonder if, given his personality quirks, he should be married at all.

Keep reading HERE at Current.

EXCLUSIVE: Martin Clunes Talks on No. 7 for ‘Doc Martin’

HOLLYWOOD—Martin Clunes returns as the brash yet brilliant titular village physician in Britain’s “Doc Martin.” The long-awaited seventh series (season, as it is referred to in the U.S.) of the popular medical comedy premieres Thursday, Jan. 14 at 8 p.m. on some PBS stations. In Los Angeles, it airs on KCET, a non-commercial education independent television station. American Public Television distributes the series in the U.S., and PBS stations may carry it. Visit your local station’s website for updated schedule information and other bonus content.

Clunes, 54, has been playing Dr. Martin Ellingham since the series premiered in 2004. The series airs every two years thanks to a comfortable schedule that allows the show’s writers and producers (including Clunes’ real-life wife Philippa Braithwaite) a generous amount of time to write and film the series on location in Port Isaac in Cornwall (which stands in for the fictional seaside village of Portwenn, home to colorful villagers).

As Dr. Martin Ellingham, Clunes plays a GP whose combative attitude and tactlessness regular creates mayhem in the sleepy seaside community. In the season six cliffhanger, viewers watched as Martin saw his beloved wide, Louisa (Caroline Catz) and young child leave him. Season seven season picks up with his plan to win them back.

The award-winning actor apologizes profusely by phone because a train delay has pushed back his interview time just days before Christmas.

“I actually live out in the country,” the seasoned actor says. “Right now, it’s pretty grim here: dark, wet and windy.”

Unlike his iconic TV character, Clunes is personable and has an easygoing manner. He laughs easily and clearly enjoys playing his curmudgeonly character.

Q: The setting for your series couldn’t be a more perfect advertisement to visit Port Isaac. I can see why you’ve been doing this 11, going on 12 years.

Clunes: (He laughs.) Yeah, until we get found out.

Keep reading HERE at Front Row Features.

Martin Clunes on final Doc Martin season

Want an idea of just how popular Doc Martin is? When the British drama about a curmudgeonly doctor in a Cornish fishing village advertised for extras in the local Port Isaac press, more than 800 people showed up.

In the giant queue, which snaked around the local church hall, there were no fewer than 150 babies in prams and pushchairs eager to be chosen for the role of the doctor's 11-month-old son, James Henry. That is one well-loved show!

Over six series, Doc Martin s has averaged nine million viewers a week in the UK and star Clunes Clunes, who plays the lovable yet grumpy medic, has won himself an army of die-hard fans. Calling themselves "Clunatics", they lavish gifts on the cast and crew to underline just how much they love the drama. "They are a group of Doc Martin fans who keep thanking us for helping them to make great friendships with other fans around the world. They Skype each other," explains Clunes, 53, who has played the role for 11 years. "When episodes go out, they have discussions on it, and when there are no episodes going out, they have more discussions. There is one woman logging all the ties I wear in the show. She says, 'I don't think I have seen this tie since season two. Mind you, I haven't logged all the season six ties yet'," says the actor, who is married to the show's producer, Philippa Braithwaite. The couple live in rural bliss in Dorset, with their teenage daughter, Emily.

We've had so many presents; paintings of myself and cast members, a fridge magnet of Jimmy, my Jack Russell, paintings of my horses. A lady from Iceland hand-knitted a sweater for me, one for Emily and one for Philippa – and one for Brian the props man because he was nice to her in the pub one night," continues Clunes.

"We were given a big jar of M&Ms with 'DM' printed on each one of them for us all. Some of the Clunatics even found us when we were filming on the moors."

Clunes, who has just spent a very contented four months shooting the latest series in Port Isaac, is touched, and a little taken aback, by the show's global popularity. "When we started making Doc Martin, we could never have imagined it would have this reaction," he says. "We never anticipated this. You can't predict how successful something will be."

As the seventh series kicks off this week, Doc Martin looks set to remain as popular as ever. Dr Martin Ellingham, the GP with the disastrous bedside manner and a morbid fear of blood, has his work cut out in the new series, set in the fictional bucolic seaside hamlet of Portwenn. Louisa (played by Caroline Catz from DCI Banks), the woman he recently married, has had enough of his grouchiness and has walked out. She has taken young James Henry and gone off to stay with her mother in Spain.

Keep reading HERE.

Cheery Clunes couldn't be more different to his Doc Martin character

Martin Clunes is the star and co-steward of Doc Martin, the popular and personally beloved British import about a big-city doctor whose life becomes enmeshed, to his ongoing discomfort, with the people of Portwenn, a Cornish fishing village (He retreats there when a suddenly acquired fear of blood interrupts his surgical career).

It is a comedy of extreme frustration, in which Clunes' Dr. Ellingham, highly competent at his job and self-defeating in life, nevertheless manages to fall in love, with Caroline Catz's schoolteacher Louisa, have a child and marry, in that order (There are many other characters, each frustrated and frustrating in his or her own way). This has happened at a glacial pace and with many excruciating detours – a pace slowed further by the fact that, though the events of one season lead more or less straight into the events of the next, the show now appears only every other year. Martin and Louisa's son, James, born in a 2011 episode, is still a baby.

That on-off, schedule, which involves both Clunes and his producer wife, Philippa Braithwaite, has been adopted in order to not unduly disturb either the life of their daughter or that of Port Isaac (Port Wenn in the series), where the show films; its global success, which has also generated native adaptations in several other countries, has turned the town into something of a tourist destination. It's also because, Clunes says, "We'd never get the scripts in shape in any less time. It's not an easy show to write. However much time is never enough".

Though the character he plays on television is serious to a fault, Clunes himself is a cheery sort who finds amusement everywhere; indeed, he can barely speak for laughing.

It's your show, you're somewhat in charge of the character. But to what degree is he in charge of you?

That's a good question. I can tell off the page just reading it to myself when scripts come in and somebody's just gauged it wrong. Like if he apologizes, or uses the F-word – we don't go there. It sounds so wanky to say he lives, but I'm also very aware that I'm motivated by a huge desire to fall over and walk into things to make people laugh. You do get into a groove, which is great, when you get to act with the same people a lot. Like with, Caroline Catz – it's like a duet, you're like a duo jamming together.

Keep reading HERE at stuff.co.nz

Calling All Clunatics: Send Your Doc Martin Fan Video Messages for Martin Clunes NOW

Doc Martin fans: NOW is the time for you to record your special fan video messages for Martin Clunes, because they could be shown on live TV on ITV!

One of the producers of Lorraine, the ITV morning show, just let me know that host Lorraine Kelly will be chatting with Doc Martin star Martin Clunes this Thursday, 19 November 2015.

Even better, the show’s producers are inviting fans of Martin Clunes and Doc Martin to send in video messages about your love for the ever-popular ITV series and its star.

So if you’ve ever wanted to tell Martin about how big a Clunatic you are, here’s your chance!
(And if you’re desperate for Series 8 of Doc Martin, you can also make your pleas, I mean desires, known to the man who can make it happen.)

Both individual and group fan videos are welcome.

The producers will be selecting the best videos to show to Martin and Lorraine viewers during his segment, so make yours brilliant!

Videos should:

• Focus on why you love Doc Martin and Martin Clunes.

• Be kept to 10-20 seconds max in length.

• Emailed to MMA@ITV.COM — NO LATER THAN 3 PM UK time (10 AM Eastern/7 AM Pacific) tomorrow, Wednesday, 18 November 2015. (Videos larger than 10MB should be sent using WeTransfer.)

• Note: Begging and pleading for Doc Martin: Series 8 is optional.

Here’s to your fan videos being shown to Martin Clunes on the Lorraine show!

Found HERE at The British TV Place.

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.

Knock knock...

Found HERE at STV's Twitter page.

Much the same thing....Spain? Are you sure?!

Doc Martin – ITV, 9pm

DOC Martin has been held hostage so many times, the surprise is PC Penhale hasn't engaged himself as his personal bodyguard.

Tonight he's back in the clutches of yet another crazed villager. Although, handily for the last episode of the series, having time to himself, albeit unwanted, does give him an opportunity to reflect on his and Louisa's future. A moment of realisation he undergoes at the end of every season, before the next one starts, amidst thudding inevitability, with the couple right back at the beginning.

As it stands, Louisa is supposed to be leaving for Spain. Soon, however, she is amidst a rescue party of villagers hellbent on setting the, er, much-loved, Doc free.

Found HERE. 

It's strange to think that Martin Clunes is now more well-known for Doc Martin than he would be for, say, Men Behaving Badly. Crazy. Anyway, the finale in the series sees Louisa worrying about Dr Timoney's suggestion that she and Martin aren't meant to be together might have prompted him to leave Portwenn for good. Calling on Ruth, Morwenna and Janice for help, she tries to track the down the missing GP, with no luck. However, what Dr Ellingham's friends and family fail to realise is that he is actually trapped up at the Winton farm, where desperate wife Annie is trying to coerce him into performing a life-saving operation on her terminally ill husband Jim. Meanwhile, Ruth and Bert seek out Al to offer him a proposition regarding the whisky and the B&B

Found HERE.

Caroline Catz: 'Even though Louisa and Doc Martin love each other it may not be sensible to have a relationship'

Caroline Catz reveals it’s make or break time for Doc Martin and Louisa in the final episode of the Cornish comedy-drama on Monday.

Caroline, who plays Louisa, told What's on TV: “Louisa and the Doc (Martin Clunes) have been on big journey in their relationship during this series. Then, true to Doc Martin, there’s a mad, interesting and insane situation that takes them on this other journey!”

What’s on TV can reveal things take an unexpected turn in the Ellingham’s relationship when Mrs Annie Winton, played by Gemma Jones, kidnaps the Doc!

The Doc’s priorities quickly change from his relationship to survival when a house call to Annie Winton (Gemma) turns nasty. Terrified of husband Jim dying from his malignant tumour Annie demands Doc treats Jim at home so he doesn’t have to go to hospital. 

Meanwhile, Louisa is left wondering why her estranged husband hasn’t turned up for their make-or-break dinner…

But while everyone else thinks the Doc has done a runner, Louisa isn’t so sure. She enlists the help of Pc Penhale (John Marquez) and retraces Martin’s steps to the Winton farm, where Annie’s got her gun!

Will it be curtains for the couple, one way or the other?

Caroline explained: ‘Martin has this great integrity. He’s a real anti-hero in a way, and has his own quirky charisma, which Louisa loves.

“She puts up with him because he’s a kind, considerate person who finds it really difficult to express himself. But even though they love each other it may not be sensible for them to have a relationship.”

The final episode of Doc Martin screens on ITV, Monday, November 2 at 9pm.

Found HERE at What's on TV.

Nicholas Lumley in Doc Martin

I had a coffee this morning with charming Hungerford actor Nicholas Lumley to find out what his experience was like acting in the popular Doc Martin series with Martin Clunes.

“The casting call was for an eccentric old farmer with an accent based loosely in the West country. At the audition the director told me just to ‘talk pirate’. I was delighted to get the part, as there is always lots of competition.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the sun always shines in Doc Martin. This is deliberate – any grey skies are edited out in post-production. This creates a holiday destination atmosphere on set even when it is wet and windy filming.

Caroline and I had a lovely stay for four days in The Slipway Hotel in Port Isaac opposite the harbour. The hotel is always in the episodes, besides Mrs Tickle chemist shop – which in real life is a sweety gift shop that sells Doc Martin souvenirs. Most of the filming takes place at a farm near the town.

I was asked if I minded having the caravan on the farm as a dressing room. It wasn’t very big but Sigourney Weaver had used it the week before…(she had met Martin on a chat show and asked to be in the series which is very popular in the States). The doctor surgery and most of the interiors have been constructed in a large barn on this farm.

I have long been a fan of Martin Clunes so it was a delight to meet him. He came and introduced himself when I was in make-up having my prosthetic goitre put on (which took an hour). Despite his on-screen grumpy character, Martin is always charming and funny.

Keep reading HERE.

TV Times Cover

Found HERE. The article pages can be found in a post below!

Doc Martin's Caroline Catz can't control her laughter after dipping her head into bucket of cold water while filming chilly scenes on Brighton beach

She's in the middle of filming a brand new season of much-loved British comedy-drama Doc Martin.

And it looked as though Caroline Catz wasn't going to be forgetting her Tuesday on set in a hurry as the star shot some chilly scenes on Brighton Beach. 

Despite the harrowing temperatures along the British coastline, the 45-year-old star was seen dipping her head into a bucket of cold water as the cameras rolled. 

Attempting to shield herself from the cold, the actress sported a palm print wet suit top, skinny jeans and knee-high black boots.

Though her chilly ordeal clearly called for an extra layer as a female companion was seen helping the British star cover up beneath a long blue puffer jacket, while her wet brunette locks were wrapped into a towel. 

Fortunately, Caroline appeared to see the funny side as she laughed incessantly while walking along the pebbled beach.   

Before her damp tresses were hidden beneath a towel, Caroline was sure to set tongues wagging as she leaned over and ran her fingers through the ends of her hair.

Meanwhile, the mother-of-two previously opened up about her role on the popular TV series, and insisted that it's one of the best projects she's ever done.  

'There is no reason in the world not to do this job. It’s too good and too much fun not to,’ she told You magazine in September.

The show sees Caroline star as headteacher Louisa Martin, the wife of the strangely lovable Doctor Martin Ellingham, played by Martin Clunes.

Continuing to gush about the show, the star said: 'For me, one of the appeals of Doc Martin is that it inhabits an entirely credible make-believe world with its own rules, sense of time, space and even fashion.

‘It’s a bit like Narnia, or even at times The Prisoner! There’s this amazing, expansive landscape, which feels so free and open, yet you’re constantly drawn back to the epicentre of the village, where you can’t even blow your nose without everyone knowing about it. And you can’t get away, no matter how hard you try,’ she continued.

 

 Found HERE at The Daily Mail (with more photos!).

9:00pm, Monday, 2 November 2015, ITV

It's make or break for Portwenn's most meant-to-be couple tonight as they face their future in a tense and gripping episode. Deciding they can't bear another second of couples therapy, Martin and Louisa vow to make a final decision about their relationship over dinner. But a couple of unhinged villagers have other ideas and Martin is held at gunpoint as a worried wife (Gemma Jones) demands a more optimistic prognosis for her terminally ill husband. Clearly Martin is unamused and incredulous. Can he talk some sense into her before Louisa gives up on their marriage? It might be a while till another series of Doc Martin – please give us a happy ending, Mr Clunes!

Found HERE at What's on TV.

The Impossible Dream

From this week's TV Times Magazine. A very big thank you to SR for the scan.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Episode 8 - The Doctor is Out - Trailer

Series 7 - 8. The Doctor is Out (Same SPOILER content, different SPOILER picture)

Louisa worries Dr Timoney's suggestion that she and Martin aren't meant to be together might have prompted him to leave Portwenn for good. Calling on Ruth, Morwenna and Janice for help, she tries to track the down the missing GP, with no luck. However, what Dr Ellingham's friends and family fail to realise is that he is actually trapped up at the Winton farm, where desperate wife Annie is trying to coerce him into performing a life-saving operation on her terminally ill husband Jim. Meanwhile, Ruth and Bert seek out Al to offer him a proposition regarding the whisky and the B&B. Medical drama, starring Martin Clunes. Last in the series.

Found HERE at RadioTimes.

Alien’s Sigourney Weaver turned up in Doc Martin and people couldn’t believe it

As TV cameos go, Sigourney Weaver popping up in ITV’s Doc Martin is up with there with the weirdest.

The Alien star appeared in Martin Clune’s comedy series about a brilliant surgeon who moves to a sleepy Cornish village after he develops a fear of blood.

He’s probably not a fan of Alien then.

Sigourney played an American tourist Beth Traywick who stops by the Doc’s practice to get treatment while on her travels.

Needless to say, Twitter was stupefied.

Check out the Tweets HERE at the Metro site.