Excerpt:
by Angela Dawson
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).
The seventh series of Doc Martin is about to complete its national premiere in the US, and fans already want to know if there will be an eighth. So I asked Ian McNeice.
Excerpt:
Ian McNeice, aka Doc Martin‘s Bert Large, is in the US right now, at American Public Television’s Fall Marketplace, where public TV programming execs are gathered to meet him and enthuse about Doc Martin, while screening others of APT’s programs for their upcoming schedules.We all know Ian as a fine actor, and now I can say from personal experience that he is a genuinely nice guy, too, as he was happy to chat with me by phone this morning, despite my cracking, croaky, under-the-weather voice.
Catz out of the bag on Doc Martin
By Viv Hardwick
Excerpt:
Caroline Catz is frequently asked why her character tolerates Doc Martin’s grumpy manner. “People say to me ‘why does she put up with him’. She puts up with him because she loves him, and he’s a really kind and considerate person who finds it really difficult to express himself, “ she says.
“You know he is good because you can see the way he is, and he has this great integrity. He is a real anti-hero in a way, in a great way. He has his own quirky charisma which she loves. I think it is interesting watching these two people try and be together. They are obviously attracted to one another. It is not sensible for them to have a relationship, but they love one another and that is a really common story. You see it all over the place. How many people are perfectly matched in every way?”
What’s On TV: Doc Martin’s Selina Cadell
‘Mrs Tishell isn’t having any of Sigourney Weaver’s Cornish roots!’
Excerpt:
Monday’s Doc Martin (ITV) features one of the most unusual guest star TV appearances ever, when Sigourney Weaver turns up in Portwenn playing a brash American tourist. Her longtime friend, Selina Cadell (who plays Mrs Tishell), explained to TV Times how it came about and where they first met…
How did you become friends with Sigourney Weaver?
“I met her in 1974 when she came over to visit an American friend who was living over here, who I also knew. We all hung out together, and she had such a ball that she stayed for three months. We were young actresses and spent a lot of time laughing and going to the theatre. We’re very close – we’ve spent Christmas together with our families and we work together a lot – we coach each other on our acting projects.”
How did her Doc Martin cameo come about?
“She knew I was in Doc Martin, but I never asked her to watch it. Suddenly it caught on in America and Sigourney watched it and adored it and when she came over to promote a film in February, by chance she went on The Jonathan Ross Show with Martin Clunes and asked him if she could be in Doc Martin. Then they were both funny about it – neither could believe the other one meant it – and so I brokered the deal.”
LA Times - ‘He’s just so wrong’
A chat with Martin Clunes, star of ‘Doc Martin’
Excerpt:
Martin Clunes is the star and co-steward of “Doc Martin,” a popular and personally beloved British import (from the commercial network ITV) 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.) The show’s seventh season is now streaming domestically via Acorn TV and will come to American public television early next year — KCET will carry it locally, beginning Jan. 14.
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.
Excerpt:
As lovers Gary and Dorothy in Men Behaving Badly, Martin Clunes and Caroline Quentin tickled the nation. Now they’re set for their first on-screen reunion since BBC’s Men Behaving Badly (1992–1999) ended almost 17 years ago!
Speaking about Caroline’s guest role in Doc Martin, Martin Clunes revealed there’s a simple explanation why they haven’t worked together again until now: “Nobody has asked us to! So we’ve written the part of holistic vet Angela Sim especially for Caroline. There was nobody else.”
During Caroline’s guest outing fans of Doc Martin will see her appear as alternative vet, Angela Sim. What’s on TV can reveal during the fifth episode the Doc loses the rag because he’s being followed incessantly by stray dog Buddy and resolves to get him put down. Fortunately, the grumpy medic fails in his attempts to have Buddy annihilated so, rest assured, no dogs were harmed in the making of this episode!
See all…
After almost 20 years apart, Men Behaving Badly stars Martin Clunes and Caroline Quentin are set to reunite on Doc Martin – this time as sworn enemies.
By Annie Price
Excerpt:
The stars are best known for playing warring couple Gary and Dorothy in the sitcom which ran for seven seasons between 1992 to 1999.
It may be a whole new millennium since they last graced our screens together, but Martin and Caroline confirmed all their chemistry was still there when they got back together to film Doc Martin recently.
Caroline Catz on being half of TV’s most-loved on-off couple
Excerpt:
Caroline Catz seems as much a part of the stunning Cornish landscape in which we are snapping her today as the seagulls that squawk above the beach at Port Isaac or the fishing boats that bob across the blue horizon.
Although born and raised in Manchester – a place she describes as ‘all rain and pavements’ – she has become synonymous with this beautiful corner of rural England, thanks to her decade-long role as Doc Martin’s on-again, off-again partner Louisa Glasson.