Janes Clifton | 11 December 2007 | Dominion Post

It almost feels seditious to be watching something so pleasant and undemanding. No matter how frenetic life is here, in Portwenn it's always slow and sunny. People are batty and good-humoured. No one gets murdered.

And even in a one-doc town, the health system always seems to rise to the occasion.

Perhaps the most soothing thing about Doc Martin is that so much of the action takes place to a backdrop of gorgeous, sparkly blue sea, with happy gulls and bobbing fishing boats.

Martin Clunes, who has aptly been described as the human embodiment of a big woolly jumper, reprises his role as the grumpy GP, and all the locals are back in their eternally amusing meanderings.

Last Saturday's episode (TV One, 8.35pm) was a movie-length introduction to the third season, and featured the return of head teacher Louisa's ne'er-do-well father, along with an increasingly psychotic sidekick.

This was a blessed diversion, as it's by no means clear how they can keep the "Doc and Louisa, will they won't they?" story-line going for much longer without it becoming annoying.

So many TV series have this dilemma. Unresolved romantic chemistry between leading characters is a great thing in a soap opera plot. But sooner or later it has to be resolved.

Louisa has already dallied with another man because the Doc dithered so much. They nearly had a serious romantic night, except that they both got horribly drunk. Then the Doc, by way of a medical diagnosis, told Louisa she had bad breath, and it's been pretty much all downhill since.

They need to get on with it, but once they do the programme's central premise – the lone, irascible doctor – becomes fatally compromised.

That's a development you leave till the final episode of the final series, and Doc Martin has too much charm to be wound up just yet.

This week there was no opportunity for romance, since Louisa spent quite a lot of the episode tied to a chair. Her dad's sidekick refused to take his pills and went madder and madder, finally taking several hostages in the surgery.

In a clever interweaving of plots, Louisa's father's dastardly plan to pick up a consignment of explosives off the coast ran into the manic rare-bird-guarding activities of the local dotty, retired colonel (there's always a dotty, retired colonel in these shows), and it ended in tragedy.

But only for the rare birds, which the Doc accidentally blew up. That was an unusually discordant note in an otherwise reliably jolly show.