‘Best Medicine’ Review: Josh Charles’ Pitch-Perfect Performance Anchors Fox’s Endearingly Cozy Small-Town Dramedy

Midway through the premiere of Fox’s Best Medicine, schoolteacher Louisa (Abigail Spencer) recalls her life before she moved to Port Wenn. “When I lived in New York, everybody living in their little boxes with their little salads, that’s no way to live,” she sighs. She loves being in this tiny Maine village where everyone knows one another, she tells new-in-town Dr. Best (Josh Charles), even if it also means her neighbors might nose around her business or offer unsolicited advice.

I don’t know how many people might be watching that scene from their own lonely big-city apartments, or how many more from actual small towns that are nothing like cozy and picturesque Port Wenn. But Louisa absolutely nails the appeal of this show. Warm as a wool blanket, inviting as a hug and about as plausible as a fairy tale, Best Medicine offers a gift to the viewer: It allows us to imagine, at least for one hour a week, that there might be a cozier, happier, more sociable way to live.

Created by Liz Tuccillo (Alaska Daily), Best Medicine centers on Martin Best, a standoffish but talented Boston surgeon who’s abruptly taken a post as Port Wenn’s new general practitioner. His ostensible rationale is that he has fond memories of spending summers there as a kid with his lobster fisher aunt, Sarah (Annie Potts), and wants to help look after her now. His real reasons, which he keeps close to his vest, are rooted in an unnecessarily tragic backstory that the script occasionally trots out to remind us that he’s not a jerk, just troubled.

It all sounds very familiar, because it is: Not only is Best Medicine an Americanization of the long-running ITV series Doc Martin; even those who’ve never seen the original will be well acquainted with its central tropes — from the curmudgeonly physician to the quirky townspeople to the minor medical mysteries that comprise each episode’s A-plot.

But if it’s not reinventing the wheel, it is building a very solid version of the wheel — one that, in the first four chapters sent to critics, strikes a winsome balance between heart and humor.

Charles is excellent as Best, turning in a performance so finely calibrated that even a gesture as small as the way he flutters his fingers around a bunch of bananas clues us into the complicated emotions bubbling just underneath his invariably frowny exterior. Best is less misanthropic than grumpy, awkward and a little lonely, like a stray cat unused to being invited in — and therefore easy to like even when he’s huffing at his good-natured but hilariously useless assistant, Elaine (Cree), or turning down invites from locals eager to welcome him into their community.

The characters around him are less well-defined at this point, though the likability of the actors goes a long way. The Other Two’s Josh Segarra radiates an irresistible puppy dog energy as Mark, the local sheriff, while Potts is great fun as the salty aunt who sees right through Best’s rigid exterior. Spencer is more restrained as Louisa, a love interest so idealized even her ex admits she’s perfect, but shares a nice chemistry with Charles. And while Elaine seems to shift priorities and personality traits from episode to episode as the writers try to figure her out, Cree’s cheerful histrionics remain endearing throughout.

Best Medicine is not, as of yet, a show distinctive enough to make a strong lasting impression; I doubt I’ll be thinking about it three months from now, let alone a year from now. And although the early chapters hit the mark of being sweet but not overly sentimental, I wonder if the tone will shift toward the latter as Best becomes more embedded in this community and his sad history starts to come to light.

But for now, it’s offering up a world that simply feels nice to hang out in — probably because its idyllic vision of small-town life is, in its own way, a fantasy as far-fetched as Narnia or Neverland.

Bad things happen sometimes in Port Wenn, but nothing so awful we need to fret very hard. Even the medical “emergencies” tend to be minor enough that cranky patients are able to walk into Best’s office to yell at him for canceling the monthly baked bean supper over something as silly as, um, a contagious virus.

There are no politics here — if the town even has a mayor, we have not met them yet. None of the citizens seem to hold any biases, or even any suspicion of outsiders like Dr. Best. They might disregard Best’s medical advice, but no one rails against vaccines and modern medicine. There are occasional mentions of people needing to work to pay bills, but no one appears in real danger of going homeless or hungry. So unburdened are these people that they have the energy to spend an entire episode getting worked up about whether the gay couple who own Port Wenn’s most beloved restaurant might have to rehome the pet pig they’ve been letting roam freely in the kitchen.

It’s not exactly gritty realism, but that’s why it’s so enticing. “We need a doctor, and you need patients. We don’t all gotta love each other, do we?” argues Mark in a rare moment of wisdom, when a frustrated Best briefly considers moving on. It’s a reasonable point, but ultimately an unnecessary one. Best Medicine is a ticket to a place where everyone does love each other deep down, even and maybe especially grouches like Dr. Best. That’s why getting to spend time there feels like such a balm for the soul.