A little Cornish community is having a party after ITV announced it will cancel the popular TV programme Doc Martin.
After 18 years, the drama about a general practitioner in Cornwall starring Martin Clunes, 62, is coming to an end.
The television programme centres on the life of GP Martin Ellingham, who quit his job as a surgeon in London due to a fear of blood and started practising medicine in the made-up Cornish beach town of Portwenn.
However, residents of the fictional Port Isaac, where the show is shot, are relieved that it is no longer on the air in the hopes that it would lead to calmer streets and fewer traffic.
Since the first episode of the series aired in 2004, it has averaged eight million viewers and been televised in 18 nations, bringing hundreds of visitors to the town each week.
The village’s housing values have doubled in the last 20 years, and during the summer, it is so busy that some residents even avoid going to the center.
The Times quoted retired teacher John Trayhurn as saying, “We’ve met individuals from all over the globe.”
They begin around 9.15 a.m., and our first coachload arrives at 9.45 a.m.
Even though he welcomes hundreds of visitors outside his house every day and even offers water bowls to thirsty dogs wandering the hamlet, Mr. Trayhurn fervently avoids Port Issac’s downtown during the hotter summer months.
I haven’t been down since March, he continued. I continue to the summit and go inland to have a stroll.
Because of the enormous number of visitors, businesses in the vicinity have also had to change how they operate.
In order to prevent his clients from having to drive through congested areas of the village and to avoid paying for pricey parking, one fishermen told The Times that he now provides free delivery to his customers.
The well-known sea-shanty ensemble Fisherman’s Friends, who started busking at the Port Isaac harbour in 1991, had to cease performing in 2019 due to the large number of spectators.
It was no longer safe or courteous for the locals of Port Isaac to have almost 4,000 people show up to hear us perform, the singing trio, who have been in two feature films, said on their website.
It is therefore with a heavy heart that we must stop.
While welcoming tourists to the Cornish village, one of the band’s singers, Jeremy Brown, said he does not want coach loads of people to show up.
The Times quoted him as saying, “We get 70 people marching down, swarming up to the’surgery’.” “They march back up again after taking a picture.
That isn’t good for business, you say.
With only two fishing boats left in Port Isaac and the local population being evicted by skyrocketing housing costs, tourism is now the main industry.
Despite only having 721, there are now more than enough Airbnbs in the village. According to the online real estate portal Rightmove, the average cost of a property in Port Isaac over the previous year was £794,038.
The famous cottage that served as Doc Martin’s residence and doctor’s office this year was listed for sale for £1.25 million.
When it wasn’t being used for filming, the Grade II listed “Fern Cottage” building, which looks out over the village’s harbor, was rented out for more than £200 per night as a vacation rental.
Clunes stated in an interview with the Daily Mail that despite the show’s high ratings, he does not believe it would be as good without them.
It would be great to continue, but I doubt we could maintain the quality, he said.
“It’s tempting to keep working because the job is fantastic, but we want to maintain a high standard of quality.”
At the conclusion of series nine, we believed we still had one more season to go just to keep things interesting.
We were fortunate enough to be offered a Christmas special as well, so that allows us to finish the series in a really nice way. Ten seemed like the right time to end it.
Clunes expressed his regret for “the people of Cornwall, and Port Isaac in particular,” who were “always so kind” while the production team was shooting the series, after wrapping up the last episodes in July.
Martin and producer Philippa Braithwaite discussed why they chose to stop Doc Martin now rather than wait until late 2020 to give fans a chance to commemorate the programme and its eponymous character with a final season.
Doc Martin’s last season premieres on ITV on Wednesday at 9 p.m.