‘Best Medicine’ Episode 1 Recap – Charming Enough But Lacking Its Own Rhythm

If you didn’t know that Best Medicine was a remake of the cosy British hit Doc Martin, you’ll figure it out pretty soon into Episode 1, which is basically a carbon copy of the original show’s pilot. The obviousness of the redo is kind of forgivable as a way to situate new viewers – or curious old ones – in the slightly wacky headspace of a comedy about a grumpy doctor taking on a remote post in a small town full of local eccentrics, but it does raise the question of why anyone would bother to remake it in the first place if it was going to be exactly the same.

This might be a temporary problem. It took the U.S. remake of The Office a while before it eventually metastasized into its own thing, and while I still don’t think it’s a patch on the original, it’s beloved enough that I seem to be in the minority. But, like Doc Martin, Best Medicine is pretty effortlessly charming and quite genuinely funny, so it’s difficult to complain too much at this early stage.

Dr. Martin Best was once a renowned Boston heart surgeon, but due to circumstances that are lightly alluded to in this premiere, he has decided to downsize and relocate to the small Maine town of Port Wenn, where he used to summer as a child. His appointment as the local physician is met with relatively open arms by everyone except Louisa, a local reeling from a recent divorce from the town sheriff, who takes Martin’s unsolicited staring as a come-on. As it happens, he’s just getting a close look at one of her eyes, which is beginning to show signs of glaucoma. But you can understand the problem, since one imagines Abigail Spencer can barely spend five minutes in a grocery store without random men staring at her.

For such a small town, Port Wenn seems to operate on fast-forward. Everyone is talking about Louisa’s romantic misadventures – even Sheriff Mark himself, who’s still planning to throw the wedding reception to “celebrate” being a “free man” – and eager to rope Martin into the gossip. And everyone seems to need the doctor, even if they’re not all willing to book an appointment when they can simply collar him in a store.

There’s little wonder that everything’s so chaotic, since Martin’s receptionist is a distracted wannabe YouTuber named Elaine who treats the position as some kind of talk show and tends to let whoever wander into Martin’s office without warning. His first guest – sorry, patient – is a man named Gilbert who is developing breasts thanks to a relatively common condition called gynecomastia, but the explanation turns out to be a bit more sordid than a run-of-the-mill hormonal imbalance.

The penny drops when, a little later in Best Medicine Episode 1, Martin meets Gilbert’s wife, Susan, who maintains their active sex life through the judicious use of estrogen cream that Martin will now need to order for her in lieu of the previous doctor. Putting two and two together, Martin realises that the estrogen cream is causing the breast growth, but it’s awkward since neither Gilbert nor Susan has told the other about their respective problems.

There’s an unexpected third wheel in this equation. Pretty soon, another, much younger man visits Martin with the same unexpected breast issue, and it somehow takes Martin an inordinate amount of time to figure out what is obvious to the audience immediately – Susan is having an affair. This is later proved in lightly dramatic circumstances, leading to a lot of awkwardness at Louisa’s reception, which, for reasons that seem unclear even to him, Martin finds himself in the middle of.

Martin has a personal connection to Port Wenn in the form of his lobsterwoman aunt, Sarah, who summons him to the docks by feigning an emergency. He also has some kind of tragedy in his past that, in a roundabout way, led to him freezing during a surgery back in Boston. The legacy of his trauma is the sight of blood making him pass out, which is a bit of a problem for a doctor. There’s obviously a lot of grief bundled up in Martin’s backstory, which will certainly be unpacked in subsequent episodes.

And do I detect a romantic connection between Martin and Louisa? One thinks so. They share a fairly warm conversation during a dawn raid on the grocery store, and he looks at her rather pensively a few times, which can only mean one thing. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I’m sure.

In the meantime, Best Medicine is… fine. The characters are immediately likeable and Martin’s decision to leave the place and never look back is quickly reversed when he realises he might well be needed – and that staying might well be the best thing for him personally. It’s super familiar, perhaps to its detriment, but there’s plenty of time for it to develop its own vibe. Hopefully it will.