I don't know when (or, frankly, why) they filmed this extra show, billed as the last episode of Doctor Martinbut it landed on our screens just at a time when the NHS is on the brink of collapse.
To be fair to them, the producers wouldn't have known about the upcoming strikes, but the fact remains that in Dr. Martin Ellingham's idyllic Cornish patch of "Portwenn", no one gets that sick, to the point of absurdity. . I'm no expert on health outcomes in the Southwest, but this particular corner of the region has an unusually high incidence of comically mild ailments, and somehow Covid completely missed it.
I get the point of viewing comfort, and ITV has long relied on staples like Doctor Martin as a reliable tonic for any signs of weakness in the evening grades, but perhaps the doctor had better be recalled now before he becomes a health hazard himself. You see, I had to come up for air halfway. Doc Martin Christmas Special, so cloying was the relentless sentimentality. Children, sweet old men, cute dogs, babies, engagements, even a turkey saved from the slaughterhouseโit all unfurled in a merciless torrent of schmaltz.
My immune system's cynical antibodies didn't stand a chance. In fact, Ofcom should have ITV put a health warning on Doctor Martin because I'm convinced that prolonged exposure to this cloying show could cause the viewer to get type 2 diabetes, and that's even less fun than watching martin clunes do it for very easy money. The Doc Martin character fits old Clunes like a latex glove, I'll admit, but I wonder if it's done him, or the rest of us, any good.
What happens in Portwenn is, as always, irrelevant. Capricious pensioner after capricious pensioner displays disturbing symptoms that sound terminal, but whatever they have turns out to be relatively insignificant: heartburn instead of throat cancer. Of course it is. One of them (Len the Mechanic, played with admirable verve by Ron Cook) thinks he's Santa Claus, gets drunk and climbs on the doc's roof but, unsurprisingly, doesn't break his neck: the lack of tension is palpable. The doctor crashes his car in the snow to avoid running over the stray turkey (as you do), suffers hypothermia, and hallucinates that his mother has shown up and started abusing him.
It's a rather strange scene, cutting-edge, if uninnovative, but soon the doctor finds refuge, recovers, dresses up as Santa Claus, and drives into town to hand out papers to the children in the lantern parade. The old cop stalking a much younger woman for fucking - surely illegal these days - gets engaged to her, and another couple, randomly, is going to have a baby. It's all pretty disjointed; it's not really much more than a loose string of vignettes by Cornish yokel comics, which is a little too condescending for comfort. The effect is made even worse by the five ad breaks, ITV milking Boxing Day gold for all it's worth.
No one ends up going to see the oncologist or succumbs to covid in Portwenn in the long run, and Doc Martin never takes that final step into madness, even after the ghost of nasty Mama Doc Martin haunts him. That would have been a decent plot twist. Even the final scene, of the self-immolation of the community Christmas tree, gets a warm and humorous treatment as we drive out of the pretty town. But with Doctor Martin Viewers are now finally discharged after 18 years with the doctor, we'll never know if everyone ends up in the burn unit waiting for painful skin grafts. I suspect not
