Doc Martin; Arena: James Joyce’s Ulysses; Wedding Season

“It is comforting, gently funny and always entertaining. How could you not enjoy a show in which an incredibly grumpy doctor with no bedside manner deals with minor domestic crises and medical emergencies, while trying to avoid the eccentric locals in his idyllic Cornish village?”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“You don’t need an MA in television studies to see why Doc Martin is so popular. It’s a refreshingly gentle watch in an age of excessive crime dramas, and a beguiling fantasy of rural life in a long tradition of TV shows like Ballykissangel, Hamish Macbethand Heartbeat. It was all as familiar and cosy as the duvets we’ll apparently be hugging this autumn to cut our heating bills.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i

“Clunes is 60 and this is expected to be the final series for the show, which launched in 2004. That’s a great shame, because his character is as entertaining as ever — and the drama continues to attract big guest stars.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“I think the schedules may miss Doc Martin. With an ever-burgeoning menu of samey cop and drug dramas there’s a place for a curmudgeonly hero with no social skills and a compulsion to tell the truth.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“As you’d expect for a film dedicated to one of the most important works of modernist literature it was a reverential 90 minutes, but it was also entertaining; witty and not shy of focusing on Joyce’s love of filth. If I were a literature student wanting a time-saving crash course with insights from leading authors I’d watch it pronto.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“It’s a frenetic blend of romcom, road movie and action thriller but suffers from the truth of the adage that when you try to be all things to all people, you become nothing to anyone. The mashing together of different genres, putting tropes from each back-to-back without either one illuminating or putting a twist on the other, leads it to become less rather than more than the sum of its parts. Wedding Season is an ambitious undertaking that might fail at what it’s trying to do but remains entertaining enough.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian