TV Scope: British television drama is usually of high quality, but a new comedy series, Doc Martin, appears to be the exception, writes Jacky Jones.
The series is about an angst-ridden surgeon, Dr Martin Ellingham, played by Martin Clunes, who can no longer stand the sight of blood. He gets a job as a GP in a Cornish village called Portwenn.
He has a fear of dogs but the storyline is so weak and obvious that you can tell that by episode two he's going to adopt a mongrel that has taken a liking to him.
Other characters include Elaine - the practice receptionist - who plays the quintessential dumb blonde.
She spends most of her time talking to her boyfriend on the phone and generally making herself useless.
Caroline Catz (The Vice) plays Louisa, the schoolteacher, who is obviously going to become Doc Martin's love interest.
The first episode featured Doc Martin arriving at his broken-down surgery and proceeding to antagonise most of the village within a day or two.
Health storylines were meagre and ranged from diagnosing a case of acute glaucoma after one glance from a distance at Louisa's eye, to a case of gynaecomastia (men's breasts) in the local Colonel Blimp.
The weak plot needed something to liven it up and, sure enough, the gynaecomastia was caused by too much sex with his menopausal wife, Susan, who was also bonking Ross the surfer.
Ross develops breasts too and the problem apparently was because Susan was using too much vaginal HRT cream. Who knows whether this has even a grain of medical truth in it, but it seems unlikely.
Other characters included two plumbers (shades of Ballykissangel), Auntie Joan, who enjoys strangling chickens and various mad drivers.
This is supposed to be a comedy, but the funniest (not) comment was "one spore or two" when the milk was being dished out at the coffee break.
In case you don't get the joke, this was a reference to the state of the fridge in the surgery, which had fungus all over it.
By the end of the first episode (one hour of boring TV viewing), Doc Martin decides, having dithered for about five minutes, that he's going to stay in Portwenn and make a go of it.
I predict this one will not run and run, unless it improves over the next few episodes.
Measured against quality UTV medical dramas such as The Royal, this gets a two out of 10.
Just about might be worth giving it another week.
Jacky Jones is regional health promotion manager with the Western Health Board