Costco Connection - June 2012

Martin Clunes
Doc Martin

DR. MARTIN Ellingham is an overly straitlaced former surgeon, now suffering from a fear of blood, and not suffering people well at all. He is gruff and ill-tempered, and often insults his patients. He seems to hate dogs, children and old people. But Martin Clunes, who plays the irascible former London surgeon, now a general practitioner in the picturesque Cornish village of Portwenn, shares none of the good doctor’s negative traits.

BUFFALO PIC TURES

“I inwardly suffer people. Over here, most
of my profession just wants to be liked,” he
laughs. “I get a lot of refreshment from being
quite the loathsome, and not caring if anybody
likes me. So it’s a sort of celebration of some-
thing that I don’t have but that I aspire to.”
The character would be easy to dislike, if
it weren’t for a couple of human traits. “The
only reason I think it works is because we do
have him a brilliant diagnostician and a great
doctor,” Clunes explains, “and that buys us
some license for him to annoy or rub up the
wrong way his patients and vice versa.”
And, he adds, “he is vulnerable. He can be

Martin Clunes and Caroline Catz

hurt.” Which he often is, by the townsfolk with whom he interacts, and by his inability to deal with the mutual attraction between him and a local schoolteacher, Louisa Glasson.

“The scenes I really turn up every day for
are the ones with Caroline Catz as Louisa,
because it’s just fun to kick these two around.
It’s such an unconventional love story. We
actors, we’re only as good as our actresses.”
The show is produced by Clunes’ wife,
Philippa Braithwaite, which raises the ques-
tion, What is it like when Clunes and Catz have
to film a love scene? Clunes laughs, saying,
“Our love scenes are terrible. They just miss
every time, and that’s really a source of joy. I
was once in a supermarket wheeling my trolley
around, and there’s a little tap on my shoulder,
and there was a gentleman in his early 70s, and
he said, ‘I don’t want an autograph, but just
marry that girl before I die.’ ”—SF

The Costco Connection Midsomer Murders (Seasons 1–4), Doc Martin (Seasons 2–5) and Downton Abbey (Seasons 1–2), as well as other British television programs, are available at all Costco warehouses.

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