I’m happy to report that I spent a nice, quiet Christmas Day with my parents at the old family house on the other side of London. I think I’ve described here before how my grandparents house is one I have visited since childhood:  my grandparents are no longer with us sadly, but their house has now become a sort of family hub. Basically I went up there on Christmas Eve,  and spent a quiet two days with mum and dad, enjoying one of mum’s incredible Christmas dinners. Up there, though, I watched a bit of tv I don’t usually watch.

One particularly odd program was Doc Martin, with Martin Clunes. I really must say that, watching it last night just before bed, I was genuinely perplexed to see anything so nonsensical on uk television. It was not clear whether it wanted to be laughed at or taken seriously. In the program I saw, a doctor was driving to the aid of a patient hospital had badly injured his leg; but the doctor was driving through a snow storm and crashed his car into a tree. The doc survived the crash but apparently then caught hypothermia, the symptoms of which he describes to this audience in great  detail. However, although he was about to die, he nonetheless was able to still go and help his patient, dressing his severely injured leg for them to both go and attend a Christmas Day parade at the end of the program.

I had never seen Doc Martin before, and I didn’t know anything about it. At first glance it appeared to take itself seriously, and I assumed it was a standard drama about a rural doctor; but as I watched it, it became more and more ridiculous. On the other hand, if it was supposed to be humorous, then viewers would certainly be given the slip by the amount of medical detail, as well as the fact the character was in a car crash and was potentially about to die of hypothermia. These days we all watch more and more stuff on streaming services (on that note I also managed to watch the superbly fascinating Glass Onion). I don’t watch that much old fashioned terrestrial tv drama, and judging from the bit of it I glimpsed last night, I have to be concerned about what a state it’s in. Was that really the type of ridiculous nonsense people are watching these days ? Is this how companies like ITV are trying to take on the likes of Netflix?

And what a way to end Christmas Day!