Doc Martin (2004)

Doc Martin (ITV, Wednesday) still is, and at the top of its game. So much so it would put car mechanics out of business. It also has the advantage of only appearing every two years, meaning that the lay off almost makes you forget just how good it was. It's also the only doctor's surgery anyone fancies visiting.

In the opening episode, the Doc was grumpier than ever. For him, this is an "all-life crisis". If he won the lottery, I'm sure he'd throw the ticket in the bin before sticking pins in his eyes.

Does anyone actually behave like this or are they "on the spectrum"? If it is the latter, he's off the scale, but who cares. In real life, you would simply be saying, "Wow, the Doc's hard work. How long do we have to stay?"

To cheer himself up in series eight, he's agreed for wife Louisa (Caroline Catz) to have a dog, which of course, is something else to complain about, and trip over, while banging his head on a low door. If you know a grumpier person than this, please contact a TV company about doing a documentary.

He was ably assisted by PC Penhale (John Marquez) who was told so many times that he was an idiot, I expect an immediate class libel action from the local constabulary to stand up for one of their own.

The village plod was suffering kidney stones: "How often are you passing water?" asked the Doc. He replied: "Bit personal isn't it, Doc?" This prompted the policeman to say, "I'm not an idiot". Oh, yes you are. As the episode closed, Penhale's quest for romance dissolved along with his kidney stones. He seemed more relieved about the latter. Quite right.

Two years Doc Martin's been off our screens and I find, somewhat head-scratchingly, that I've somewhat missed it. A rather welcome fainting lady vicar came to town, and failed to marry dunderhead Joe, and Al's fat dad poisoned everyone, and thus all was back to normal among the usual yahoos and googans of Portwenn.

At heart, despite the clotted-cream fantasies, this still revolves around the Doc and the fact that the problem of living in any paradise, anywhere, will always, surely, simply be people and relationships. At one point, poor Louisa asked her husband, famously filter-free to the point I'm always staggered he passed any GMC screenings, of their son, James Henry: "Do you think he likes me?" Answers the now-peerless Martin Clunes: "Who knows?" A tragedy stuck inside a comedy, as so many fine British comedies have ever been at heart.

The summer holidays are over, but the sun almost always shines in Portwenn, albeit sometimes on bittersweet scenes. Here, in a new series, we find reconciled Martin and Louisa raising baby James Henry. Louisa: "Do you think he likes me?" Martin: "Who knows? I didn't like my mother; does it matter?" Elsewhere, daft constable Joe prepares to marry flighty Janice, in a ceremony to be conducted by "a vicar with learner plates on".

Doc Martin: series 8 is just what the doctor ordered

Toby Earle goes for a check-up in Portwenn.