"Doc Martin," the globally popular British series about an antisocial big-city surgeon working as a general practitioner among boundary-disrespecting neighbors in a Cornwall fishing village, has just begun its fifth season. Over the last couple of years it has become a staple feature of American public broadcasting -- the second episode of the new season premieres locally tonight on KCET -- and has been widely available online, offered free to subscribers of Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus. Acorn Media, which has released the previous four seasons on DVD, will add the fifth in June. Martin Clunes (whose "William and Mary," an earlier series in which he plays a cuddly undertaker, has also become a PBS favorite) stars as Martin Ellingham, the eponymous doctor. Caroline Catz is Louisa, the teacher he inarticulately loves, nearly marries and, at the close of Season 4, has a child with. This year also sees the arrival of the great Eileen Atkins ("Cold Comfort Farm," "Cranford" and a co-creator of "Upstairs Downstairs") as Martin's Aunt Ruth, a psychiatrist who shares his dry, logical, suffer-no-fool-gladly temperament.
I spoke with Clunes recently, by phone to his home in England. He is clearly a different man from the one he currently plays on television. You should imagine hearty laughter coloring his responses below.
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Tipster: conniej
WANT to cast a comedy drama or a sitcom? Then go no further than Martin Clunes, our foremost character actor. Not that he is particularly looking for other projects, mind.
In his year off from Doc Martin he is doing a documentary on Madagascar and a film for the Born Free Foundation. After his series about dogs and horses, Clunes is never far from the animal kingdom but this week Cornwall is on his mind with the release of the latest DVD of the universally loved Doc Martin. We talk about “the baby”.
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Tipster: conniej
IF it’s true that the hit TV series “Doc Martin” outscored the summer cricket on Canberra TV, British actor Martin Clunes is flattered, for as he says, “nothing moves Australia like cricket.”
And he knows what he’s talking about, for he’s been here many times. He’s even been to Canberra, just before the Olympics, with the documentary series, “Men Down Under”, and claims to have interviewed a female rower by the lake.
I’m talking to Clunes by phone at his Dorset farm in England, far from any theatres and TV stations and 177kms away from the village of Port Isaac, where “Doc Martin” is filmed.
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Tipster: DCcurlygirl
