• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 7 hours ago

Small-town America takes it on the chin once again with another TV show that pegs the residents of a quaint seaside village as a bunch of hopeless eccentrics or worse.

Eccentricities are one thing, but this new series, “Best Medicine” -- premiering Sunday on Fox -- goes even further.

In this show, the residents of fictional Port Wenn, Maine are unwelcoming, rude, stupid, self-centered, prone to sudden, angry outbursts and not above literally just walking into another person’s home when the person is not home -- an act that would be looked upon anywhere else as an act of unlawful trespassing, but not here.

Into this town full of nuts and idiots comes a surgeon from Boston seeking to set up bis own general practice and in the process, adopt a new and less stressful lifestyle.

If this scenario sounds familiar to anyone, then it may be because it was the premise of the British series “Doc Martin,” a show seen for years on PBS in the U.S that has been adapted for this new Fox series.

In “Best Medicine,” the doc is named Martin too -- Martin Best, hence the show’s title, “Best Medicine.”

But perhaps in a sly reference to “Doc Martin,” the townsfolk call Dr. Best “Doc Martin” every time they see him, which Dr. Best corrects every time, but to no avail.

As in the original “Doc Martin,” Dr. Best (played by Josh Charles, above photo) is portrayed as a man with limited social skills, who is nevertheless an effective, observant and shrewd physician.

There is just one problem: He has recently come to be adversely triggered by the sight of blood, which understandably can be a problem for a doctor, especially the only one in a small town.

It is another reason he has left the high-pressure life of a hospital surgeon in Boston. By settling down in a quieter environment, he hopes his new anxiety over blood might pass.

But unfortunately, his new life appears very quickly to be anything but quiet. Instead, he is verbally assaulted -- and in two instances, literally punched in the face -- everywhere he goes practically from the first time he sets foot in this unpeaceful hamlet.

One of the jokey stereotypes about small-town life in the show is that within minutes of his arrival, the entire village knows there is a new doctor in town and they either accost him for medical help no matter where they find him or they simply barge unannounced into his office -- a place he has not yet settled in -- and demand that he treat them.

They are jerks, and so is the young woman whose job it is to manage patient visits and otherwise prevent them from practically breaking down the door to the doctor’s examining room.

The girl is not only a jerk, but the worst of the village idiots. She is a self-absorbed, social-media chronicler of every aspect of her life, and she films everything, even the arrival of the new doctor.

Dr. Best finds her appalling, but it takes most of Episode One of “Best Medicine” for him to finally fire her. Oh, but she’ll be back.

Why? Because she has come up with a lighthearted scheme to blackmail him for her job.

From “Northern Exposure” to “Twin Peaks,” TV has long stereotyped small towns and their inhabitants as either secretive or crazy -- and sometimes both.

Welcome to small-town America? I’ll take my chances in New York, thank you very much.

“Best Medicine” gets a preview premiere on Sunday, January 4, at 8 p.m. Eastern on Fox. It starts in its regular time period, 8 p.m. Eastern, on Tuesday, January 6.