If laughter is the best medicine, Josh Charles sees his character Dr. Martin Best as both the straight man and the comedic engine behind new Fox medical dramedy, “Best Medicine.”
“His actions or his words can usually drive and create a lot of the conflict, which leads to the comedy. He’s a bit awkward, not just socially but also physically, so there’s a lot of banging into things and falling, tripping. I love all that, it’s a lot of fun to do — just be a giant ass, basically,” Charles told TheWrap following Sunday night’s special post-NFL premiere. “I had been looking to do more of a comedy lately, and was looking to do something in New York preferably, and this checked off those boxes. Having lived in some darker worlds of late, I was just eager to live in a lighter, warmer kind of climates.”
The “Handmaid’s Tale” actor leads the cast as Dr. Best, who returns to the East Coast seaside town of Port Wenn to serve as the fishing village’s resident GP. However, his tenure as a Boston surgeon means he doesn’t quite gel with the local townsfolk — even if he has his own quirks and an aversion to blood.
“There’s this dynamic of him being in contact with the people of this insular small town, everybody’s in everybody’s business, and he obviously doesn’t operate like that. There’s a sophistication level, there’s an education level, he sort of feels a bit above, so it’s fun to watch him get his comeuppance sometimes and fall over and make an idiot of himself. I love that instant karma,” Charles added. “I think Martin Clunes did it quite a bit in the British series, so I wanted to keep as much of that as we could.”
Indeed, the original “Doc Martin” pops up in Season 1 alongside fellow stars Abigail Spencer, Josh Segarra, Cree, Stephen Spinella, Jason Veasey and Annie Potts.
“He was honestly amazing, he was so great, so gracious. Obviously, everybody on our side was thrilled to have him, but he was also tickled to be there. Originally, they were just presenting him with something much smaller, but he was like, ‘No, if I’m going to do it, I want to do something a little meatier.’ So he comes in and has a much larger role,” Charles said of Clunes. “We had a lot of scenes together and we hit it off. He was just fantastic, really, really charming, really funny, just everything you would imagine, just an absolute gentleman.”
So what can fans expect as the series takes on new cases throughout the season?
“You’ll get to know the supporting characters more and, hopefully, just be really entertained. There’s some crazy, wild medical cases, a lot of shenanigans that go on in town,” the “Good Wife” and “Sports Night” alum teased. “He’s a character you just kind of love to hate a little bit. He gets so worked up, so even when he’s trying to do the right thing, he’s pissing everyone off. It’s light, it’s warm, it’s funny. There’s some real heartfelt moments in it too, as it progresses more, there’s definitely some depth to it.”
“It is trying to be that tonic. I hope we can marry both worlds — grounded in some kind of truth and reality; that all these people feel like real people,” Charles concluded. “What makes the show, to me, is the interaction between these characters and we have a really great group of actors … a solid group that made coming to work a lot of fun.”
“Best Medicine” airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox and streams the next day on Hulu.
