FOX’s Best Medicine Gives Doc Martin a Charming American Update
American remakes of U.K. hits don't always work on this side of the pond. However, Best Medicine, the newest take on Doc Martin, has charm to spare.
As Anglophiles already know, the United States gets a ton of television from our friends across the pond, whether that means directly importing British hits or just making American versions of some of the United Kingdom’s most successful properties. Many of our most popular reality programs are simply carbon copies of shows created in the U.K. — you can thank a Brit for everything from American Idol to Dancing with the Stars — and U.S. attempts to recreate hit British scripted series have historically run the gamut from the great (Ghosts, The Office, House of Cards) to the genuinely awful (Gracepoint, Skins, Life on Mars). This is all to say that the new FOX drama Best Medicine is merely the latest in a long line of American remakes, but one that is nevertheless much more charming than it probably has any right to be.
Best Medicine is a remake of Doc Martin, the popular ITV comedy-drama series that ran for ten seasons, spread over nearly two decades. Starring Martin Clunes as the titular physician, the original is probably already familiar to many American viewers, thanks to its widespread popularity (and consistent reairings) on PBS stations across the country.
(*We covered the early seasons of the show fairly extensively here at Telly Visions, though you’ll have to wait till we get the archives back up and running to see any of that.)
