Medical dramas may belong to the same genre, but some of its most beloved series couldn’t be more different in tone, perspective or what they ultimately offer viewers. Fans of House tune in to watch Hugh Laurie‘s charming yet endlessly sarcastic doctor as he unravels medical mysteries, while HBO Max’s award-winning The Pitt keeps audiences on edge with one of television’s most authentic portrayals of life inside an emergency room. But while both shows are incredible in their own right, Fox’s newest medical drama takes a different approach altogether. Rather than leaning on relentless, high-stakes emergencies, the series trades adrenaline for heartfelt storytelling and the warmth of small-town life.
Best Medicine, which was first released on January 4, 2026, is a remake of the long-running British series Doc Martin. The series reimagines the story in coastal Maine, swapping Cornwall cliffs for lobster traps and Atlantic fog, and delivers plenty of medical dilemmas as it does small-town gossip. The end result is a warm hug in the shape of a medical drama, which has just landed on Netflix.
What Is ‘Best Medicine’ About?
Josh Charles in Best MedicineImage via Fox
Much like the original series, Best Medicine follows Dr. Martin Best (Josh Charles), an accomplished heart surgeon from Boston, who has his life turned upside-down after he develops a phobia of blood after a traumatic case. Seeking a new life and trying to escape from the traumas of his past, he accepts a job in Port Wenn, a small fishing community where he used to vacation as a child. When he arrives, one thing becomes glaringly obvious: Martin’s awkward, very honest, and relatively socially adept demeanor is no match for the nosy, small-town environment he’s walking into.
From the get-go, Martin is at odds with just about everyone, including Louisa (Abigail Spencer), a schoolteacher who clocks his rudeness within minutes of meeting him, and Sheriff Mark (Josh Segarra), Louisa’s recently dumped ex-fiancé. The move also offers an opportunity for him to get closer to his aunt, the stubbornly self-sufficient Sarah (Annie Potts). In each episode, Best Medicine combines a lightly comedic medical mystery with a Port Wenn tradition Martin doesn’t quite understand, from baked-bean dinners to annual community rituals that feel designed solely to test his patience. Plus, as resistance against Martin grows, his cases often become a battle between Martin and his patients: he pleads with them to follow his advice, only for them to brush him off so they can continue with their lives and traditions, even though Martin believes these habits are making them ill.
Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz
Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In?
The Pitt · ER · Grey’s Anatomy · House · Scrubs
Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
🚨The Pitt
🏥ER
💉Grey’s
🔬House
🩺Scrubs
FIND YOUR HOSPITAL →
01
A critical patient comes through the door. What’s your first instinct?
Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now.
BTriage fast and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately.
CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act.
DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what’s the thing that doesn’t fit?
ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place?
The honest answer says more about you than the one you’d give in an interview.
ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone’s life is actually on the line.
BBecause I wanted to help people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard.
CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive.
DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving.
EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn’t know what else to do with my life.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
What do you actually want from the people you work with?
Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
ACompetence and calm — I need people who don’t fall apart when things get bad.
BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it’s handled.
CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated.
DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me.
EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it?
Every doctor who’s worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
AI carry it. All of it. I don’t look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly.
BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost.
CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don’t think you’re supposed to handle that alone.
DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed.
EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
How would your colleagues describe the way you work?
Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.
AIntense and completely present — no small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there.
BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something.
CPassionate and occasionally chaotic — brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else.
DBrilliant and difficult — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me.
EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and easy to like.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure?
Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can’t provide.
BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it.
CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems.
DRules are for people who haven’t thought hard enough about when to break them.
EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What does this job cost you personally?
Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What’s yours?
AEverything outside these walls — I’ve given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it.
BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I’ve made a complicated peace with that.
CStability — my personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that’s not entirely a coincidence.
DMy relationships — I am not easy to know, and the people who’ve tried to would probably agree.
EMy sense of gravity — I use humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back?
The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.
AThe fact that it’s real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today.
BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there.
CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I’d do it again.
DThe next unsolved case — there’s always another puzzle, and I’m not done yet.
EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job.
REVEAL MY HOSPITAL →
Your Assignment Has Been Made
You Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.
You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
You’ve made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
County General Hospital, Chicago
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.
You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
ER is television about endurance. You have it.
Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Seattle
Grey’s Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
It’s messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.
Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, NJ
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
You’re not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you’d deny it.
You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they’re smart enough to keep up.
The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.
Sacred Heart Hospital, California
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that’s not a flaw, it’s a survival strategy.
You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
‘Best Medicine’ Delivers Small-Town Charm
While the first season relied on a repetitive format episode after episode, the series still delivered on charm and quirkiness, making it an easy, worthwhile binge. In Billy Fellows’ review for Collider, while the series received a 6 out of 10 for being too surface-level, a few performances from the cast were highlighted. Among them is Charles’ himself, who carried the show with his stiff yet surprisingly endearing character. “It’s impossible to look past Josh Charles when settling on the most engaging aspect of Best Medicine,” Fellows wrote. That was especially the case in a key monologue moment of Martin’s, where his guard slowly starts to come down. “Charles doesn’t completely drop his character’s emotional barriers, keeping his jaw tense like he wishes he hadn’t shared such personal history,” Fellows wrote. “But his softened eyebrows remove the scowl viewers have grown accustomed to by this point, showing a far more vulnerable character that makes you want to give him a big hug, even if he hates them.”
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Doctor, I think this list’s funny bone needs work done, stat!
Other cast highlights include Spencer, whose previous role in Suits made her equally a quick fan-favorite. “Spencer radiates empathy and kindness,” Fellows wrote. Together, Louisa and Martin’s will-they-won’t-they chemistry carries the show, while allowing viewers to see a new, softer side of him. Another highlight is Segarra’s Sheriff, where he carries the same goofiness as he did in The Other Two, where viewers can’t help but fall for his “himbo” persona.
Overall, while Best Medicine won’t be competing with The Pitt over Emmy nominations or intensity levels, the Fox series is a worthwhile, charming watch with a predictable, repetitive format that makes it an easy, approachable binge. Already renewed for a second season, which is set to premiere on September 22, 2026, there’s no better time than now to tune in to the first season, whether you’re on Netflix or Hulu.
Release Date
January 6, 2026
Network
FOX
Directors
Jaime Eliezer Karas, Jamie Babbit