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Series · Acorn TV · 2004

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Doc Martin

69Worth an evening.

Competence in the service of a town. The manners are bad. The work is not.

The review

Martin Ellingham is almost a warning and almost a model, which is why the show lasts. He can do the one thing the village cannot do for itself, and he is bad at every other human exchange. The standard does not grade bedside charm above a correct diagnosis. It does notice when a man has to be dragged into his own household.

Watch it for the work and for the slow argument that a town is allowed to need you and also to correct you. Skip the half hours that are only a joke about his face. Stay for the ones where he chooses the patient, or the boy, over being left alone.

Journal

Keep Doc Martin in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 69. Yours can differ.

The glance

Piety is the thin one.

Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

All Creatures Great and Small

81 instead of 69

All Creatures Great and Small is still a drama show, and it scores 81 instead of 69. What you gain is piety: Reverence shows up as care for a creature and a duty kept.

The eight

9
Industry
He is a doctor who still knows the job. The village is healthier because he will not fake a diagnosis.
7
Household
A marriage, a son, and a house he did not ask for and cannot decently abandon.
4
Piety
Conscience is there. Reverence is thin. Blood is a fact to him, a soul less so.
6
Courage
He tells a hard truth in a room that wanted comfort. That costs him friends.
8
Republic
Portwenn is a town with a school, a plumber, a constable, and one man they all have to trust.
7
Temperance
His rudeness is not the lesson. The lesson is that skill without a neighbor is a smaller life.
8
Truth
He will not tell a patient a pleasing lie. The show is on his side when he refuses.
6
Stewardship
A son arrives, and the question becomes what kind of father a precise man can be.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · Doc Martin · 69IMDb tt0408381

Live HistoricSee what matters.

Series · Acorn TV · 2021

Pass it on

Dalgliesh

68Worth an evening.

A serious man after the truth. Not for children. Worth an adult evening if you can bear the case.

The review

P. D. James wrote a detective who is also a man in mourning, and this series keeps that. Adam Dalgliesh does not enjoy the corpse. He wants the sentence that makes the death intelligible, and he will not take a prettier one. That is truth as a vocation, which the standard recognizes even in a murder story.

Do not put it on for children. The cases are ugly, and ugliness is not a virtue. For an adult who has started to think every institution is only a costume, it is a useful counter: a public servant who still believes a fact can be established and ought to be. Watch one case. Then tell a truth you have been softening.

Journal

Keep Dalgliesh in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 68. Yours can differ.

The glance

Household is the thin one.

Is a marriage, a parent, or a child a real life here, or just a prop?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

Adolescence

78 instead of 68

Adolescence is still a crime show, and it scores 78 instead of 68. What you gain is household: The whole measure is a household that loved a child and did not know him.