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Doc Martin, review: we’ll miss the grumpy doc when he’s gone

Fay Ripley and Martin Clunes - ITV
Fay Ripley and Martin Clunes - ITV

TV thrillers are all well and good, but sometimes you need a break from jeopardy and intrigue and Aidan Turner’s beard. I realised this as the opening titles of Doc Martin (ITV) induced a feeling of deep contentment.

It is comforting, gently funny and always entertaining. How could you not enjoy a show in which an incredibly grumpy doctor with no bedside manner deals with minor domestic crises and medical emergencies, while trying to avoid the eccentric locals in his idyllic Cornish village? Even the Wikipedia episode synopses are a treat: “Louisa’s relationship with Martin takes a turn and she leaves with the baby. However, Martin makes it up to her by operating on her mother when she gets an umbilical hernia.”

This is the last series, I’m afraid. The show has been on our screens for 18 years. Martin Clunes explained recently that the well of ideas was running dry: “You’ve got a main protagonist who doesn’t like anybody and nobody likes him, and then go from there.” But they still came up with a decent one for this first episode, which began with the doc legally unable to do his job because he no longer had a licence to practise.

He resigned at the end of the last series and was now adjusting to life without a job. This consisted of holding his baby son as if he had never encountered a baby in his life, fixing clocks and rearranging the cutlery drawer. Naturally, he did these things while still wearing his suit and tie.

Guest star of the week was Fay Ripley as a single mother whose exhaustion Martin instantly diagnosed as something called myasthenia gravis. She refused to be treated by him, declaring that she had already been tested for food allergies. “She doesn’t need to see a naturopath or a wizard!” Martin spluttered.

It all culminated in a car chase and Ripley’s vehicle teetering over the edge of a cliff, Italian Job-style. Martin ventured onto the back seat to administer treatment. When watching this show, just embrace the silliness.

By the end of the episode he had successfully asked for his licence back (there was a welcome appearance here by Rupert Vansittart, the character actor who delivered one of comedy’s great cameos as a boorish guest in Four Weddings and a Funeral). “Tell ’em it was a learning experience. Completely meaningless but works every time,” advised PC Penhale, thereby demonstrating that the show may have been with us for two decades, but its scriptwriters keep a keen eye on the absurdities of modern life.