We have been fans of the Doc Martin series from the start. I agree that it is brilliant… Well maybe not ‘brilliant’ but pretty good.
The fact that it is set in Cornwall means that the writers use the local dialect for comedy effect. Cornwall is seen as rather backward compared to the rest of us sophisticates. Try listening to this:
James Joyce, in Ulysses, combines reference to the Toby Tosspot character and the masturbatory meaning of tossing off, when Buck Mulligan proposes a mummers’ play with all the *dramatis personae *being dirty puns, including:
TOBY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)
OMG! I had a good long look at a few diff maps of England. On this site, there were maps of all kinds for all manner of things in England. I never realized there were such things as counties (like Cornwall, Devon, lots of Shires (Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire). They got a Yorkshire for every direction on the compass. Plus there are many other shires too. (like Lancashire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, etc.)
Remember that movie, “Sink the Bismark”? They had battleships named after Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, East and West Sussex, Kent, etc.
OK, Bob. Can you riddle me some of these?
Which one is more horrible? Elaine or Paulene?
Paulene did an unspeakble evil thing to that poor girl Poppy. Why she do such a thing? Poppy never did her any wrong except for to be competent at important things where Paulene was incompetent to the extreme.
I always kind of felt sorry for Paulene before that. It wasn’t really her fault that she was so incompetent. But there was no excuse for treating Poppy in that way.
Ahh. I finally remember now to ask the most important question of all. What is it about the Brits and tea? I drink a few cups of coffee during the day. It tastes good (with milk) and it gives me a nice little energy buzz. But tea doesn’t do a darn thing for me. Yet the English treat it as if it were some kind of holy water. What in the world is up with that?
What is up with the dog? Why does the dog behave as if it knows the doc and is owned by the doc.
Finally what is up with everybody calling him, “Doc”? When they do that, I want to hit someone. The worst offender is that radio lady. Doctor Ellingham has asked her to calll him Martin or Dr. Ellingham. but she pays no notice and continues to call him “Doc”. She calls him “Doc” 3 times in one sentence. I just get so infuriated when I hear that. She also tries to set him up and make him look bad on her radio program. If I was the doctor, I would derive lots of secret pleasure from plotting various ways to get her out of the villiage and out of my life. What a bitch! I really don’t like that character. But please recognize I distinguish between the actor and the character. The actor is very talented to get me to despise her so much.
The writers and showrunners have done an excellent job in making that character so despicable and despised. But that has nothing to do with the actor - aside from the fact that she has done a good job in making herself out to be so despicable.
Oh! It sure felt good to get all that off my chest. Thank you so very much!
I would also like to ask, “What is the funniest thing you find about this show?”
IMO, it is that many people have expressed the desire to go and visit this villiage. But, do they realize that if this was a real place, people seem to be dropping faster than they would if a nuclear bomb was ever exploded on the the place?
I cannot believe the rate at which people are dropping from some kind of exotic and life-threatening disease. My gosh, it’s as if the showrunners need to demonstrate how incredibly talented and capable Doc Martin really is. Seems to me they will kill the whole village if they have to.
[spoiler] In case you don’t know, Martin’s parents never wanted him around and so, in the Winter, they shipped him away to some prep school and in the Summer they shipped him away to his Aunt Joan in Portwenn who really did care about him. The result was that Martin was considered to be very “oddly” behaved and he wet his bed. He also developed Aspergers Syndrome which meant he had great difficulty understanding the feelings of others and communicating with others.
I need to say that I have no idea if the Aspergers was due at all to environment of just hereditary.[/spoiler]
I think this show is indeed very close to “brilliant” because it shows the struggle this one man faces in his life and to some degree that is due to the way his parents raised him. I think we all have issues related to that. As children, we try to come to terms with the way our parents treated us and as parents, we want to try to do a better job with our children than our parents did for us. For most of us, it would seem that is not very difficult.
I would have really liked to see more of this show. Specifically, I would have loved to see Martin figure out what the relation was between the way his parents treated him and the way that he deals with his patients and his son. I would have loved to see him figure out how to treat his son better - maybe even just a few simple things. Like playing catch with him. Or arranging for him to have the kind of athletic equipment that all the boys of his age needed to play the popular sports game at their respective ages - whatever that might have been. I doubt many parents have any idea just how vitally important that is in the mind of young boys.
I would so much like to have seen an episode that shows the diff between three young boys during soccer season. Maybe the parents of one of them can’t afford to get him any decent equpment. But they give him their time.
Maybe the parents of the second boy spend a lot of money to get him the finest equipment. But they can’t or won’t spend any time with him and they don’t really care.
The parents of the third boy can only afford to get him poor quality equipment. But they spend a lot of their time with him - practicing and coaching him and guess what? He becomes the county champion in his division and more importantly, he has a happy childhood and a happy family. Corney? Smarmy? (I believe “smarmy” is the British term?) Oh, you betcha. But it would be the kind of episode that would be a real tearjerker. I would love to see the doctor spend time with his son in a way that his parents never did for him and I would love to see them arrange for someone who was highly skilled in the sport to train him. Of course Martin would be there while his son trained and he would encourage his son. Wouldn’t that make for a great episode?
…or a multitude of other places.
If you want to see a lot of “British words in code”, there is a British comedy website (which I’ll name later) that I originally found linked at the BBC website in a story about the Gilbert Gottfried/Japanese Tsunami fiasco.
It reminds me of the old 1970’s National Lampoon magazine.
You’ll need the slang dictionary mentioned above, Google, and sometimes context to figure out some of the jokes [Dave is used for all male names].
WARNING If you are easily offended, don’t visit this website. It is racist, sexist, homophobic, heterophobic, anti-[all religions], anti-american/british/german/french/et al, vile, depraved, perverted, etc. But, parts are really clever and funny [the librarian jokes, for example].
I won’t link to the site, you’ll have to type it out while reading my warning above: www.sickipedia.org
Enjoy
It gets back to the theory that gruff / painful people are narcissistic
OMG! I never realized this. But I suppose that I should have.
Thank you.
Tosser and Wanker are about the same as “Plonker”, but in Australia a common expresstion is “dickhead”
Thank you all.
I still would like to know why the Brits seem so obsessed with tea. It’s as if they all have a teacup implanted at the end of their lips. What does tea do for you? Does it have any good physical effect?
Cornwall is very much part of Britons periphery. Part that is regarded as a holiday or retirement destination rather than a serious force. There is also a small tradition, because of its remoteness (though its not really remote), of embarrassing, second rate or out of kilter people arriving. I don’t really think there are more odd people down here, we just know them all!..
Its also a lazy cypher fro “Britishness”
Its a nice little pick me up… hell we fought two wars just to make sure we could export opium to China in exchange for tea… so its been fairly popular for some time…
Its also a lazy cypher fro “Britishness”
“The cup that cheers, but does not inebriate.”
Tea seems to have a variety of mildly beneficial effects - according to Wikipedia it “may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and some forms of cancer, promote oral health, reduce blood pressure, help with weight control, improve antibacterial and antivirasic activity, provide protection from solar ultraviolet light, and increase bone mineral density” and more besides, including the suppression of pain and nausea, and the provision of calmative effects. (Though I think “may” is the word to focus on in all that.)
But tea has an important social function as well - in fact, a number of important social functions. In the context of a Doc Martin-type medical drama, it’s relevant that the preparation, serving and consumption of tea is an established mechanism for regulating stressful situations and helping people deal with mild shock. If something unpleasant has happened to you, you will inevitably be offered a cup of tea as an indicator of concern and support. And, apart from the psychological benefits of having concern expressed, the sharing of the tea and the accompanying space for conversation provides an opportunity for shared processing of whatever it is that is causing stress or shock.
And, unlike coffee or alcohol, you can drink numerous cups of tea with a variety of people without adverse affects on your nervous system.
I haven’t heard “giving it a wank” actually (though I’m definitely going to add it to my vernacular)
Maybe you were thinking of having a wank?
…or alternatively, discussing British slang <ba-dum tssh>
In my experience, people who don’t understand why the British like tea come from countries where it’s almost impossible to get proper tea.
Americans put ice and lemon in it, for God’s sake :mad:
I probably drink at least six to eight cups of tea per day. It’s the default refreshing drink, and it gives you an excuse to have a biscuit or two. What’s not to like?
Which one is more horrible? Elaine or Paulene?
Like a lot of the characters these are stereotypes. It is all done for comic effect. Elaine got fired
Paulene did an unspeakble evil thing to that poor girl Poppy. Why she do such a thing? Poppy never did her any wrong except for to be competent at important things where Paulene was incompetent to the extreme.
I always kind of felt sorry for Paulene before that. It wasn’t really her fault that she was so incompetent. But there was no excuse for treating Poppy in that way.
Again - comic effect.
Ahh. I finally remember now to ask the most important question of all. What is it about the Brits and tea? I drink a few cups of coffee during the day. It tastes good (with milk) and it gives me a nice little energy buzz. But tea doesn’t do a darn thing for me. Yet the English treat it as if it were some kind of holy water. What in the world is up with that?
Stereotyping - The British are supposed to drink lots of tea and tea is the cure for any ailment… You might also notice that they drink a lot of beer and wine too.
What is up with the dog? Why does the dog behave as if it knows the doc and is owned by the doc.
Comic effect
Finally what is up with everybody calling him, “Doc”? When they do that, I want to hit someone. The worst offender is that radio lady. Doctor Ellingham has asked her to calll him Martin or Dr. Ellingham. but she pays no notice and continues to call him “Doc”. She calls him “Doc” 3 times in one sentence. I just get so infuriated when I hear that. She also tries to set him up and make him look bad on her radio program. If I was the doctor, I would derive lots of secret pleasure from plotting various ways to get her out of the villiage and out of my life. What a bitch! I really don’t like that character. But please recognize I distinguish between the actor and the character. The actor is very talented to get me to despise her so much.
From the start Martin makes it clear that he does not want to be ‘Doc’. Of course the pun is intentional. Since he ha6tes it - everyone uses it. The radio interviewer is another caricature of the stupid insistent interviewer - the type that asks a survivor of some disaster “And how do you feel now?”
The writers and showrunners have done an excellent job in making that character so despicable and despised. But that has nothing to do with the actor - aside from the fact that she has done a good job in making herself out to be so despicable.
Oh! It sure felt good to get all that off my chest. Thank you so very much!
To be honest, I think you are over analyzing it. The characters are not meant to be real, they are comedy characters, and thus, exaggerated. Martin Clunes is a well known (over here anyway) comic actor, although he does serious stuff too.
Sounds like a hackneyed cliche to me.
Corny it certainly is - but that it NOT the same as smarmy. Smarmy is the guy overdoing the charm to the extent that he puts people off. Think Tony Blair.
I’m English and I detest tea. And think yourselves fortunate; but for the outcome of a few battles you guys over there would be swilling as much tea (or char as it’s also known here, from the Mandarin ch’a, tea) as the British.
It’s a stereotype, but a reasonably true one - we drink a lot of tea. Why is this a problem? Why is tea inferior to coffee (or anything else) just because it’s different? You do realise that ‘a little energy buzz’ isn’t the only reason people ever drink anything?