There’s no requirement to be familiar with the long-running British series Doc Martin — from which Fox’s new Best Medicine was adapted — to enjoy the comedy drama starring Josh Charles. In fact, even Charles himself (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Good Wife), who plays a recently transplanted, curmudgeonly doctor on the show, was unfamiliar with the original ITV series before Best Medicine was presented to him.
"If I'm being brutally honest, I had never seen it, never heard of it," says Charles, who spoke to emmy magazine from set just before the holidays. "When I was approached about this show, aside from reading our scripts — which pull quite a lot from the British show while also creating our own version — I watched a bunch of the original series, and I was very charmed by it. I love [Doc Martin lead] Martin Clunes, and the whole show just had a lot of heart."
Charles’s Best Medicine character, Dr. Martin Best, is a successful Boston heart surgeon who takes a job as a local town doctor in the small Maine fishing village where he used to summer as a child.
Josh Charles and Annie Potts in Best Medicine 
“He has roots to the area, but he's a bit of a complicated guy,” Charles says. “He's very good at what he does and is committed to his work, but so much so that I think he's neglected a lot of other aspects of his life. And he's a bit of a curmudgeon. Impatient. A bit of a medical savant, but not someone who has the best social skills, and that's really put to the test in this small town, where he's forced to deal with people and this community.”
“A lot of the comedy of the show comes from the conflict of the people in this small town butting heads with him,” he says. “And that's wrapped into this medical case/detective procedural element that we have as well.”
When it comes to Charles’s own TV viewing habits, like so many of us, he doesn’t get to watch as much as he’d like — “just as a father of two younger children” — but he does find time to watch sports, documentaries and the occasional scripted series. “I tend to collect them and then watch them late at night when I have a little downtime and some time to myself,” he says. “I like to binge.”
We asked Josh Charles to share some of the TV projects that define him.
My favorite shows as a kid: The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Sanford and Son
I spent Friday nights with my grandmother. We'd watch the ABC shows The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, then I'd fall asleep on the couch, and that was amazing. But the first show I fell in love with was Sanford and Son. I love that show, and I loved Redd Foxx so much.
The show I consider to be ahead of its time: All in the Family
It was obviously very successful, both comedically and as social commentary, but All in the Family was ahead of its time. How sad to bring it up now, given the tragedy that just happened to Rob Reiner, but that show was absolutely a masterpiece. I watch it to this day. And I still just marvel at the writing and the performances.
The last show I watched: The Righteous Gemstones
I watch anything Danny McBride is in. He makes me laugh like nobody else. I love the worlds Danny and Jody Hill create, and I think their humor is just really aligned with what makes me laugh.
The show I love that may surprise people: The Bureau
I don't know if it would surprise people, but maybe it would since not everybody knows about it. There was a French show called The Bureau. It’s one of the best pieces of television I've ever seen. I binged that on my own, and then my wife recently binged it herself and got to experience what I experienced. I haven't seen the new [American adaptation, Showtime’s The Agency], which I hear is quite good, too. But the original is so well crafted: the scope, the scale, the acting, the directing.
My most recent binge: The Sopranos
I, of course, had already seen The Sopranos. But I recently decided that I was going to revisit it and spend my nights when the whole house was asleep watching the entire series from the start. It took me maybe three weeks, because I was watching it every night, and it was killing my life, because I was waking up dead tired to get the kids to school. But that show just holds up.
The show I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never seen: Game of Thrones
Everybody I know tells me just how brilliant Game of Thrones is, and Peter Dinklage is an old friend. I feel horrible that I haven't seen it, but I will watch it at some point!
This article originally appeared in emmy Magazine, issue #13, 2025, under the title "Killer Charm."
Best Medicine airs Tuesdays on Fox.
