Every day, this man lives his life as if he were an alien from another planet who knows the English language but knows nothing of human emotions or how humans behave towards each other and how they expect others to behave towards them.
His blood phobia causes him to leave his prestigious job in London as a surgeon and move back to that remote little seaside village, Portwenn, where his aunt Joan still lives. He takes the job as the village GP because the former GP had died.
Putting aside the other two levels of how to enjoy this show for now, you should know there is one absolutely hilarious aspect of this show. But I don’t think people can really understand that until they get perhaps halfway through the show. There are 6 seasons and each one has approx 8 episodes. If it was an American show, I think they would have produced at least 4 or 5 times that number of episodes because the show really is that excellent and there are so many more people in American than Britain.
The hilarious aspect (just my opinion of course) is that every time there is a situation in the village (and there is one of them at least once or twice per episode), the way the situation is resolved is by Doc Martin performing some brilliant medical technique. The episode may not have anything to do with medicine. But that doesn’t matter. Doc Marten will use his medical skills to save the day.
It is hilarious because an outsider might very well think the doctor was a terrible curse on the village. Although only one person ever dies while in the care of this doctor (as best I recall), it’s as if people are dropping like flies every show. If an obnoxious new character shows up, you can bet they will begin to suffer from some rare and bizarre disease and will be gone and never seen again. This aspect may be just too difficult to explain for me. You’ll have to watch a few episodes before you will understand it (I think).
AAMOF, I think you have to watch at least “a few” episodes before you can begin to understand why so many people love this show.
Where I live, elderly people seem to just love another Britcom called “Coronation Street”. Whenever they get together, it seems that is all they want to talk about. This show still attracts an adult audience. But it attracts a considerable younger one than Coronation Street.
There are also some running gags that go on throughout this show. One is the relationship the doctor has to animals - especially to dogs. But I don’t think this one is done very well compared to some of the other gags they use.
I forgot to mention that you might want to look up “Aspergers Syndrome” in some encyclopedia before you watch this show. At one point, it is suggested the doctor suffers from this syndrome but it is never confirmed or denied. IMO, he may not suffer from that syndrome. But his personality and character is very much like someone who does suffer from that syndrome - except for one thing.
The viewer gets the feeling that if someone would only take the time to sit down with the doctor and explain some of the problems he has had dealing with people, this doctor would be fully capable of understanding and of changing his ways.
There is one episode in which his sweetheart says something like the following to him, "Martin! Why do you have to be so difficult? Why can’t you just greet people in a friendly manner? Don’t you realize that is what people expect from each other?
Then for the next hour or so, Martin does in fact pretend to greet people in a friendly manner - and very successfully too. So, we know that if he wanted to greet people in this way, he certainly could do it (which means to me that he prob does not have Aspergers). However, he explains it with words similar to the following, “I understand that is what they expect. But it is just so phone, I can’t stand to do it. I just hate doing that.”
