‘Best Medicine’: Abigail Spencer Explains Why She Was Drawn to ‘Quirky’ & ‘Heartfelt’ Fox Comedy Drama

“I feel like in the state of the world, we want a warm hug,” Abigail Spencer says on a fall day in upstate New York. TV Insider is on the set of the new Fox comedy, Best Medicine, and it’s easy to see why it will give us just that.

The series starring Josh Charles follows his character, Dr. Martin Best, a brilliant surgeon who suddenly leaves his illustrious career in Boston to become the general practitioner in a quaint East Coast fishing village where he spent summers as a child with his Aunt Sarah (Annie Potts). The townspeople include Spencer’s charming schoolteacher Louisa, Josh Segarra‘s lovable sheriff Mark, and Cree as Martin’s inept but endearing assistant Elaine. It’s an adaptation of the British series Doc Martin. (Martin Clunes will be guest starring as Martin’s father.)

Spencer hadn’t known it was an adaptation when she first read it. “I was really drawn to Liz [Tuccillo]’s writing, and then Rodney [Ferrell] and Ben Silverman, who brought The Office over,” she tells us before revealing that it also brought her and Charles together onscreen after another project they’d been attached to together last year fell through.

“The other show was two people who were married and fall in love. And I was like, man, people just really want Josh and I to fall in love on camera together,” Spencer laughs. “So, I wanted to work with him, and then I read it, and I was just totally and utterly delighted by it. I love the ‘90s rom-com. And so if there’s a way to bring a ‘90s romantic comedy and also the British humor, like of Love Actually and Notting Hill, to a series in America… That’s what I was longing for.”

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She also notes it’s something that the whole family can watch together. It’s “quirky and comedic, but also heartfelt,” she shares. It’s also something she hasn’t done before, “bleeding this sweet spot of tone. I had been looking for the romantic heroine of a show like this.” Spencer likens Louisa to “Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic or Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan.”

Martin and Louisa do get off on the wrong foot, like you’d expect from love interests. “You can’t have people that you’re rooting for not love to hate and hate to love each other,” points out Spencer. “And I think the misinterpretation is part of the fun of the dynamic and the will they/won’t they. What I also think they’ve established is all the other characters are so strong. You could go home with anyone. But at the core of it is this kind of unrequited love becoming requited.”

She will start to see a different side of him, however, that will change her mind about him, like “how brilliant he is at what he does and also how unique he is to the town,” the star says. “I think there’s an intellectual component, but also she starts to see who he really is and that they’re so different. There is a little bit of an opposite attract and that he’s the outsider coming in and she grew up in this town.”

Will you be tuning in to Best Medicine this winter? What are you excited to see? Let us know in the comments section below.

Best Medicine, Series Premiere, January 2026, Fox