Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

We were big Doc Martin fans from the beginning. we watched every episode multiple times, and have all the DVD's from the first four seasons. So, you can imagine our shock when we sat down to watch Series 5! There are so many things wrong, I hardly know where to start. First of all some of our favorite characters are missing. Aunt Joan, has been written out, ditto Pauline. The new characters are poor substitutes. (a new aunt - not at all amusing - she is too much like Martin. Louisa's mother - not a nice person and not amusing), Joe's wife - unattractive and unamusing. Second, there seems to be a new director, new writers, or both. The laughs were few and far between. As the series progressed, there were fewer and fewer laughs. The last two episodes (4 and 5, I think), we didn't laugh once through the whole show! (I can't imagine what all those people who liked Series 5 were thinking, or what they found amusing. This is all terribly disappointing! I'm afraid we will never have the same pleasure from Series 5 that we had from the earlier series, and we we wiil be reduced to watching the first 4 series on DVD. The whole spirit of the show has been lost. There is no warmth between Martin and Louisa. His new receptionist is a disaster. Burt and Mrs. Tischell seem to be the only characters who haven't changed very much.