Aahana Swrup
The Fox comedy drama show ‘Best Medicine’ finds an unsociable doctor moving to an incredibly social small town. Following an unexpected hitch in his career, Dr. Martin Best, a successful heart surgeon from Boston, relocates to a coastal town in Maine, where he spent many summers as a kid. The town has an opening for a local doctor, and the surgeon’s newfound phobia of blood, a well-kept secret of his, has freshly made him desperate for a job of any kind. Nonetheless, while his antithetical fear of blood may not be common knowledge, his aversion to small talk and new connections quickly makes him stick out like a sore thumb in this tight-knit community. Populated with offbeat characters like the wannabe influencer/doctor’s assistant Elaine, the heartbroken Sheriff Mark Mylow, the heartbreaker Louisa Glasson, and more, the town of Port Wenn remains bustling with small-town charm. Naturally, the location’s possible basis in reality is bound to intrigue fans of the show.
Port Wenn is the American Counterpart to the Fictional Fishing Village in Doc Martin
Port Wenn from ‘Best Medicine’ is not a real town in Maine. Instead, it is a fictional element borrowed from the 2004 British medical drama ‘Doc Martin,’ which the Fox series remakes. In the latter, a doctor named Martin Ellingham travels to the idyllic town of Port Wenn, in Cornwall, where a prominent social challenge awaits him. In recreating this premise through a contemporary American lens, ‘Best Medicine’ pitches a similar central tight-knit community, Port Wenn, relocating it to the East Coast state of Maine. The original Port Wenn, although a fictional fishing village, sported an off-screen counterpart in a real English village.
Located on the North Cornwall coast, Port Isaac served as the primary filming location for Port Wenn in the original ‘Doc Martin.’ The real-life location has a long history as a fishing village, dating back all the way to the early fourteenth century. As a result, the town is home to the ideal fishermen’s cottages, harbors, narrow streets, and other picturesque details. All of these elements contribute to the visual identity of the original on-screen Port Wenn. Interestingly enough, back in 2004, the British show ended up playing a significant role in improving the real Cornwall village’s tourism once fans learned about Port Wenn’s connection to Port Isaac. Therefore, the off-screen location remains pivotal to the folklore of the fictional fishing village.
New York Serves as the Filming Location For American Port Wenn
The Port Wenn depicted in ‘Best Medicine’ certainly shares a basis with the Cornwall-based fishing village in ‘Doc Martin.’ Nonetheless, the two on-screen places share little in common save for the narrative and storytelling similarities. In the case of the Maine-based Port Wenn, the town has no direct basis in Port Isaac. Instead, the Fox series finds a filming location for the new Port Wenn in several different parts of New York. Reportedly, Newburgh and Orange County have served as the central real-life location for the on-screen small town. Notably, Cornwall, the town in Orange County on the Hudson River’s western shore, plays a prominent off-screen role in creating the visual identity for the show.
Additionally, filming locations aside, the on-screen town achieves much of its sense of reality through familiar and relatable cliches and tropes. In ‘Best Medicine,’ the town serves as a starting point for the protagonist’s journey as he deals with the aftermath of a tragic incident that pushes him out of the operating room and into a physician’s office. Therefore, keeping in mind the genre of small towns as a place of self-actualization, Port Wenn remains populated with a number of quirky characters, town lore that intertwines various individuals, and an open and close-knit disposition. Furthermore, the inclusion of local places like the Port Wenn Convenience Store, Port Wenn Day School, and local business Salty Breeze, all of which become regular stops in Martin and the townies’ regular life, adds a sense of lived-in realism to the tale.
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