What’s up, Doc?
After more than a decade in development, a US adaptation of British comedy-drama Doc Martin has landed on Fox. Showrunner Liz Tuccillo and executive producer Ben Silverman speak to DQ about finding the right ingredients to bring Best Medicine to the screen.
Across 10 seasons that aired between 2004 and 2022, British medical comedy-drama Doc Martin told the story of a doctor with a particularly unusual bedside manner.
Martin Ellingham, played by Martin Clunes, was a brilliant London surgeon until he developed haemophobia – a fear of blood – which instigated a change of career and location, leading him to become the only doctor in the sleepy Cornwall town of Portwenn, where he spent childhood holidays. However, his gruff, abrupt and no-nonsense approach sees him clash with the locals.
The ITV series has now made the jump across the Atlantic with the launch of Best Medicine, a US remake now airing on broadcast network Fox. The show, which debuted on January 4, centres on Dr Martin Best (Josh Charles), who leaves his illustrious surgical career in Boston to become the general practitioner in the quaint Maine fishing village where he spent summers as a child.
Martin’s blunt, almost rude attitude upsets the quirky, needy residents and he quickly alienates the town. But what they don’t know is that he’s afflicted by childhood trauma that prevents him from being truly intimate with anyone.
Featuring a cast that includes Abigail Spencer (who plays Louisa), Annie Potts (Aunt Sarah), Josh Segarra (Sheriff Mark Mylow) and Cree (Elaine), Best Medicine marks the culmination of more than a decade’s work to develop a US version of Doc Martin.
Executive producer Ben Silverman, the chairman and co-CEO of Propagate Content, first partnered with Doc Martin execs Philippa Braithwaite and Mark Crowdy with a view to bringing the show stateside in 2013, and he estimates that at least four scripts were written that didn’t make the cut. But after showrunner Liz Tuccillo (Sex & the City) came on board, Silverman finally found a winning formula.
Tuccillo hadn’t seen Doc Martin – which is produced by Buffalo Pictures in association with Homerun Film Productions and distributed by All3Media International – when she was approached about the adaptation. But thanks to her “obsession” with small-town life, the importance she places on people and community, and her idea to move the story to a quirky small town in Maine (she spent Covid living with friends in the northeastern state), she won the job.
“I thought I was being incredibly uncreative and unimaginative when I pitched for it, because I didn’t make him a woman. I didn’t do anything very dramatic, because I just thought it worked,” she tells DQ, speaking from the set of the show’s The Salty Breeze restaurant as filming continues on the season one finale. The show found its own idyllic Port Wenn, Maine, setting in the towns of New Hamburg and Cornwall-on-Hudson in Upstate New York.
“The things I changed were about having more story. We wanted the pacing to be faster. We wanted the comedy to be a little bit stronger.” She also introduced new characters such as Greg (Stephen Spinella) and George (Jason Veasey), the older gay male owners of The Salty Breeze, and strove to create situations with more dramatic conflict. One example finds Martin’s potential love interest Louisa dealing with the fallout of leaving sheriff Mark at the altar, while Martin’s new receptionist Elaine discovers his blood phobia early on in the series.
“In this day and age, American audiences want more stakes, they want more juice,” she says. “That’s all about adding new dynamics and new secrets, so there’s just a little bit more drama in it.”
As is typical for a US broadcast show, Tuccillo’s writing staff were still turning out scripts once production began, which meant she was able to respond to the cast and their performances as they got deeper into the 13-part first season.
“You bring a group of people together who are strangers, and they have to pretend they’re in love with each other, or they’ve been married for 20 years, and you just never know if it’s going to work,” she says. “But our main relationships seem to really work. Our love interests – Abigail Spencer and Josh Charles, Louisa and Martin – have a lovely chemistry that’s really delightful to watch on set and in the edits.”
Each episode introduces ‘Doc Martin’ – a recurring gag that nods to the original series – to at least one medical ‘case of the week’ that leads him to investigate a mystery, which in turn leads him to further ingratiate himself with the locals, despite his hesitancy.
“Hopefully every case is dragging him kicking and screaming into the lives of these townspeople. And if that doesn’t do it, then there are these events that take place,” Tuccillo explains. “It’s a small town, I guess they’re very bored, so they try to find a reason to celebrate as much as they can. They have a lot of rituals and anniversaries, so if it’s not a medical case that drags him into the town, it is a baked bean supper, a blueberry festival or a big baseball game that forces him to interact with the town. Then we always are going to find ways for him and Louisa to have miscommunications and conflict, to keep them back and forth with each other.”
Storylines quickly diverge from Doc Martin, however, with Tuccillo finding them either dated or unrelatable for US audiences. Instead, she leaned on the original series for inspiration in the writers room, seeking out a slate of storylines that would always delight and amuse the audience while also ensuring Martin is driving the plot in each episode.
“It seems like the episodes work well when he is on the hunt to solve something. Usually it’s a medical thing, but sometimes it can be not a medical thing, but it helps to keep our character driven in every episode,” she says. “Then we also have those other, more personal stories that we’re trying to tell every week, and making sure they track over a whole season. Then what do we do to get the community to come together? We’re using the town as a whole character.”
Clunes is even set to appear in the series, adopting an American accent to play Martin’s father Robert Best. “It was very shocking what a sweet man he is,” the showrunner laughs, “because as somebody who did a deep dive on Doc Martin, he was in my brain as a certain person. But it was very surprising to everybody what a humble, sweet man he is.”
Silverman knows a thing or two about adaptations, having been behind US remakes including Ugly Betty, Jane the Virgin and The Office. Setting up Best Medicine after years of failed attempts then came down to a combination of pitching the show to Fox Entertainment president – and Englishman – Rob Wade, Silverman’s belief it could have a lasting, repeatable impact and wide appeal on a broadcast network rather than a streamer, and Tuccillo’s winning scripts. Fox Entertainment Studios is the producer, with Fox Entertainment Global distributing.
“Almost everywhere we went, there were executive changes throughout our development processes, whereas there’s been a consistent team at Fox that really has a vision for what Fox should be and was able to shepherd it,” he says. “Then Liz did a phenomenal job with the material. On the page it was funny, it was sweet, it was heartfelt. I have to really give her the credit for grounding these characters and adapting this into this beautiful world.” Silverman also praises the performances that brought the characters to life exactly as he had hoped.
Yet while there have been many successes (see Veep, Shameless, Ghosts and more), the history of UK-to-US adaptations is littered with failures. To avoid pitfalls with such remakes, Silverman says producers must embrace the elements that made the original show a success in the first place and “really understand” its DNA. They should also strive to build relationships with the original creators, so they in turn trust creatives to make the adaptation the show it needs to be.
“There’s a myriad of mistakes that can be made along the way, and it’s the rare alchemy of trust and partnership that can work in creating something that is so qualitatively above, where you’re getting the best elements of the underlying one but it’s become its own show in the American one,” he says. “I really feel we’ve done that here with Best Medicine.”
Silverman was involved throughout development, from idea, adaptation and script to bible and 13-episode outline. He was also a “massive driver” in casting, whether he was suggesting names or getting on the phone to convince actors they needed to join a broadcast show in the age of streaming.
“Having pursued this format since 2013, there is so much trust I’ve built up with Martin [Clunes], Philippa and Mark,” he says. “There were times we tried to do things in scripts that were too slavish to the original, and those didn’t work. There were times our American writer tried to take it into a direction that turned its back on the original, and those didn’t work. Liz really made it her own, but loved the original [enough] to infuse it with all these Easter eggs.”
He adds: “Those people who have watched and loved Doc Martin in the UK are absolutely going to love this and find all these jewels within it. Those people who have no idea what it is and are just turning on Best Medicine for the first time, which I believe will be 99% of our audience, are going to find a jewel box of a show with characters they want to return to, and a world that they want to live in. That’s hard to do.”
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
Doc Martin: A top London surgeon with zero bedside manner develops a fear of blood and retreats to a Cornish village as its GP, where his clinical bluntness clashes with needy locals and a no-nonsense schoolteacher.
Northern Exposure: A neurotic New York doctor is sent to repay his medical student debt in a remote Alaskan town, slowly thawing as he clashes and bonds with its offbeat, tight-knit community.
Everwood: A famous Manhattan neurosurgeon relocates his family to a Colorado town after his wife’s death, opening a free clinic that disrupts the local doctor’s practice and exposes simmering small-town tensions.
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tagged in: All3Media International, Ben Silverman, Best Medicine, Buffalo Pictures, Doc Martin, Fox, Fox Entertainment Global, Fox Entertainment Studios, Homerun Film Productions, Liz Tuccillo, Propagate Content