If television is the idiot's lantern then the subjective opinions of someone unqualified to write about television must surely be the idiot's lectern.

Doc Martin

ITV, Mondays

Doc Martin is something rare. Extremely rare actually. It’s an ITV programme that I can actually bring myself to watch. Aside from Champion’s League football, I haven’t watched anything on ITV for years. So much so that I don’t think I’ve ever watched anything (see above caveat) on "ITV1". I think it was still branded as Granada when the last worthwhile programme was on. And I can’t remember what that programme was. There have been odd ITV productions which have been good – don’t get me wrong – but the channel is so squalid, cheap, nasty, tacky, dumbed down and wretched that I can’t bring myself to get involved with what they laughingly call a schedule. ITV operates on the assumption that starting programmes early or late, overrunning and padding vast gobbets of time with trailers is a Good Thing. For them it is – people tune in on time and miss the start of their programme. Therefore next time they tune in early (just to be on the safe side) and sit through six minutes of adverts and trailers until their programme starts late. This then overruns its slot and you miss the start of the thing on another channel which you quite fancied watching. Oh well, you think, I might as well stay on ITV and watch this. Which starts late, you watch more adverts and trailers and you’re bedded in for the night. ITV aren’t alone in this of course – it is increasingly standard practice to have an internal schedule and a published schedule and for the two to coincide only by accident.

So my issues with ITV aren’t that they produce nothing but rubbish, its that they produce mainly rubbish and cover everything with a layer of tat. They haven’t yet resorted to onscreen DOGs (as far as I know) but I wouldn’t put it past them. Nor would I put past them the use of on screen "Coming Up Next" graphics during programmes. They are, in short, capable of being a decent channel but they have chosen the low road and become unwatchable. So why have I now decided to watch ITV for the sake of some Martin Clunes action? Well, to be honest, I haven’t. Like Poirot, I’m watching the best of ITV drama on DVD where they can’t annoy me. Except they do because they put un-skippable anti-piracy films on the beginning of every disc and patronise the hell out of you for sixty seconds a time. Home taping is killing music – WE KNOW. That’s why we bought the DVD we’re currently watching. Talk about concentrating your lung cancer campaign on non-smokers.

Doc Martin started out life as a character in a Craig Ferguson movie (before he got a tan, bleached his teeth and became the new David Letterman). It then became a short-lived series of TV Movies made by Sky’s short-lived TV Movie making division. Clunes and his producer wife Philippa Braithwaite were so enamoured of the format that they hawked the rights around and ITV showed some interest. Dominic Minghella was brought on board to make it more ITV-friendly (adultery replaced by a fear of blood as the reason for Martin decamping to Cornwall et cetera). Minghella – the man behind the revival of Robin Hood – is an anagram of Ellingham, the new surname of Doc Martin. He is, from the available evidence, a competent assembler of ensemble shows. Not huge amounts of depth to any of the characters but they are defined and operate as canvases onto which he can paint a back-story as and when needed. He tries to write sparkling dialogue for his characters but it falls somewhat short of the American series he tries to emulate. Ellingham has some good grumpy lines but he is never as sharp as Doctor House.

The show revolves around Martin Clunes and he is superb as the uptight city doctor. Everything about the character is right. The suits he wears are right – and the fact that he always wears them. Even his run is right. Shoulders back, chest out, perfectly upright. Martin Clunes has one of the most distinctive heads in British television and yet none of his earlier roles are recalled while watching him in Doc Martin. It is without a doubt the best acting performance of his career. It is a role he believes in and a role he has perfected. It’s a two dimensional performance but deliberately so. Adding emotional depth would destroy the character. Clunes manages to keep everything locked inside Doctor Ellingham so we sort of know there is something there without actually knowing what it is. It gives Ellingham a sense of reality because in real life there are people like him and they don’t let anyone in. By keeping us out of his head and his heart, we see what all the other characters see.

What has impressed me over the two seasons I’ve watched is that the makers of Doc Martin regularly refuse to go for the cheap emotional feel-good moments. Case in point – the final episode of the first series. The Doc has just saved the life of an eight year old boy, overcoming his phobia in the process. Many is the show which would’ve had a scene of his returning to the village and receiving a hero’s welcome. All the locals standing up and clapping as he goes into the pub. Hours earlier they’d played a prank on him exploiting his blood-phobia for a cheap laugh. Contrite, they shamelessly display their new found humbleness for the life saver. Instead, we had Doctor Ellingham and Louisa sharing a snog in the back of a taxi. She enjoys it, he comments that she might want to look carefully at her dental hygiene routine. She kicks him out and he, not quite understanding why, doesn’t feel sorry for himself for a second. He brushes himself down and yomps home across a field.

Doc Martin may well run and run and run. It could become an ITV fixture churning out six or eight new slices of whimsy every year until the sun collapses. Eventually it will become tired or will overstretch itself in the search for new storylines. There are only so many believable injuries one village can sustain. But for the immediate future it is a rare ITV success. A comedy drama which scores highly on both its comedic and dramatic elements and which avoids its obvious pitfalls. Well cast, competently written and attractive on several levels, Doc Martin is worth an hour out of each week. It’s just a shame Cornwall is so damn far away – it looks rather nice.