Where does Best Medicine take place? The fishing village is fictional, but it was modelled on a real one — and shot in a different state altogether
Fox's Best Medicine — the American Doc Martin remake where Josh Charles glowers at lobster traps — is set in the postcard fishing village of Port Wenn, Maine. Before you start planning a foliage-season pilgrimage: you will not find Port Wenn on any map.
The town is invented. But it's invented from very specific real ingredients, and the recipe is genuinely funnier than the show lets on. Let me explain the three-layer geography cake happening here.
Layer one: Port Wenn, Maine (population: zero, does not exist)
The name is an heirloom, not an invention — the original British Doc Martin was set in "Portwenn," which was also fictional and also stood in for a real Cornish village. The American version simply relocated the fake town to Down East Maine, gave Dr. Martin Best a childhood-summers backstory there, and populated it with the exact ratio of quirky-to-needy locals the format requires.
Layer two: the real village it's modelled on
Showrunner Liz Tuccillo built her Maine out of an actual place: Corea, a tiny lobstering village in the town of Gouldsboro, just east of Acadia National Park. She visited for ideas and storylines, and told the Portland Press Herald she wanted the show to
"be by water and have those amazing views."
The homework went deep: Annie Potts, who plays Martin's lobster-fishing aunt, did a Zoom session with Jean Symonds, a real woman who hauled traps out of Corea Harbor for decades. A Gouldsboro select board member watched the premiere with a critical eye and allowed that the screen version could "pass" for a Maine harbor town, which in New England is roughly a standing ovation.
Layer three: where the cameras actually were
Not Maine. Not even close to Maine. Best Medicine shot in New York's Hudson Valley — Cornwall and Newburgh primarily, with New Hamburg, Beacon and Hudson pitching in — because Maine is gorgeous but remote, with essentially no television infrastructure to support a full-season production. And yes, savor this: the American remake of a show famously filmed in Cornwall, England ended up filming in Cornwall, New York. The universe has a sense of humor and it is extremely dry.
The cast, for the record, went full small-town method. Abigail Spencer said of the Cornwall shoot that living where you film means
"you're really invested in the community."
The cheat sheet
- Set in: Port Wenn, Maine — fictional
- Modelled on: Corea, in Gouldsboro, Maine — extremely real, extremely tiny
- Filmed in: Hudson Valley, New York (Cornwall, Newburgh, New Hamburg, Beacon, Hudson)
- Watch it: Tuesdays on Fox, streaming on Hulu
Previously we wrote: Who killed Lynne in A Remarkable Place to Die?
