Warning: spoilers are ahead for Episode 9 of Best Medicine Season 1 on Fox, called "Doc Martin" and available streaming with a Hulu subscription.
Best Medicine delved further into Dr. Best's backstory in the latest episode, including more details on how the loss of his sister so many years ago broke apart his family. That said, there was a lot of fun to be had in Episode 9 in the 2026 TV schedule before Martin brought up Rosemary, with the arrival of the one and only Martin Clunes, who spent ten seasons starring in Doc Martin, a.k.a. the British show that inspired Best Medicine. Clunes' debut as Martin's dad reminded me of what the executive producers shared about adapting the original show for an American audience.
The arrivals of Robert (Martin Clunes) and Vanessa Best (Judith Ivey) proved that the apple didn't fall terribly far from the tree, with Martin calling his parents by their first names and debating diagnoses with his dad. Clunes wasn't reprising his beloved role, so his casting wasn't a canonical tie between Doc Martin and Best Medicine, but he was certainly playing a doctor so curmudgeonly that he made his son seem downright personable.
I spoke with members of the Best Medicine team at SCAD TVfest in Atlanta, with Abigail Spencer shedding light on Louisa and Martin's meet cute. Showrunner/executive producer Liz Tuccillo was also on hand, and she shared why the premise of ITV's Doctor Martin translates well to Fox's Best Medicine:
I think that it is a very classic tale of a sort of fish out of water, somebody who does not want to be where he is, and who gets sort of drawn into this town. I think that's a classic kind of great dramatic and comedic construct, and so I think that that sort of lends itself to just another adaptation. Just very, very classic.
Liz Tuccillo was certainly onto something about adapting a "classic" story for viewers in the U.S., as Best Medicine was renewed for Season 2 just one day before Martin Clunes arrived on the freshman show, despite early cancellation fears. "Doc Martin" also ended without definitively closing the door on Martin's parents returning, so perhaps Clunes could come back as a guest in the future. Rodney Ferrell, a fellow executive producer, shared his own take on why viewers will want to root for Dr. Best as much as Doc Martin fans rooted for that leading man:
He's a curmudgeon [straight out of] British television. Everyone around him, even in the original, is so warm and inviting that it's hard for him not to sort of break down the walls. Slightly changed, very slowly, but slightly changing to a better person as he goes.
Of course, it's worth noting that Best Medicine being inspired by Doc Martin doesn't mean just some vague similarities. The Fox series is pretty much an American version of the British show, up to and including the doctor having a phobia of blood. That doesn't reflect poorly on the medical dramedy's odds of a long future, however.
The first season of NBC's The Office was practically beat-for-beat taken from Ricky Gervais' BBC original. Not all British shows translate well on the American side of the pond, but Best Medicine could well be an exception to the rule like The Office was. At the very least, we can count on the rest of Season 1 and a Season 2.
Keep tuning in to Fox on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET for new episodes of Best Medicine, and catch up on any you might have missed streaming on Hulu. If you want to give ITV's Doc Martin a shot after seeing Martin Clunes on the new Fox show, you can find it streaming for free on The Roku Channel and Pluto TV.
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