Doc Martin star Martin Clunes on his new series
Fresh from starring in a gripping drama Martin Clunes chats about his new travel series – Islands of America
Not only is Martin Clunes a very versatile actor – it’s not many performers who can seamlessly go from serious drama such as Manhunt to funny stuff such as Doc Martin – he’s also a great presenter of non-fictional TV shows. Islands of America sees him setting off on a 10,000-mile journey exploring the vast swathe of islands, including Hawaii, the San Juan Islands, Manhattan and Alaska, scattered beyond the USA’s mainland shores. Martin’s enthusiasm for the places he visits and the people he meets is infectious.
“That’s because I really am fascinated by where I am and who I’m talking to,” he tells Yours. “So much so, I sometimes forget I’m making a programme at all. I forget there’s a camera over my shoulder. I get a bit of a shock when I first see the footage and see myself on screen. I think, ‘What I am doing there?’”
While Islands of America undoubtedly makes great viewing, it’s undeniably great fun to hear what goes on behind the scenes.
“All kinds of things,” he chuckles. “We saw such a lot of our luggage that we named the cases and bags. There was ‘Oney’, so called because it only had one handle. Poor old ‘Oney’ disappeared at some point during filming and we never saw it again. My own personal bag was called ‘Bluey’. Can you guess why? That’s ■ right, because it was blue. ‘Here comes old Bluey!’, I’d say when it appeared on the carousel in baggage collection.”
So, Martin didn’t have an assistant to pick up his bag for him? He starts laughing again.
“No! We’re a very small team on location. There’s me, the director, assistant producer, a sound man, and cameraman – that’s all. We all move luggage and get stuck in together. That’s how we work. We filmed from June to September last year but we
‘Being on top of the Empire State Building in Manhattan, just below the radio mast, was very scary’
didn’t shoot all four episodes at once. We did four trips in all, which meant we came home every three weeks so I was never away from my wife Philippa, daughter Emily (20) and our four dogs for too long.”
We’re guessing that three months of non-stop travelling and filming would have been pretty gruelling.
“Thank you for saying that!” Martin exclaims. “Obviously making a show like this is fantastic, but it’s also hard work, not a holiday. When I go on holiday, I don’t do much apart from lie on the beach and read! I certainly don’t do any scary stuff like I did on American Islands.”
What particularly frightened him? “Being on top of the Empire State Building in Manhattan, just below the radio mast,” Martin replies without hesitation. “From up there you can clearly see how New York has been shaped by the water, but I don’t like heights so being 1000ft up with only a handrail at hip height was frankly terrifying. Flying over the San Juan Islands, off Washington State, in an
open-topped bi-plane was almost as terrifying. I thought I would be fine but then we hit some turbulence and I found myself screaming. And I wasn’t very good at riding the shaky old wooden rollercoaster on Coney Island called the Cyclone. Travelling at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour from dizzying heights is not one I’d like to repeat – especially as I had to do it twice. I kept thinking the top of my head would crack off, like the top of a boiled egg.”
Well known for being an animal lover, Martin was in his element searching for the legendary Kodiak bear – the world’s biggest brown bear – on Kodiak, the largest of Alaska’s islands.
“We spent six hours in the beautiful Alaskan wilderness before we saw any,” he says. “But it was worth the wait. We were rewarded with the sight of eight in all – including a mother Kodiak and her two cubs. The bears are hunted, which I do have a problem with, but as Jen, my fantastic guide, explained, the hunting is controlled and therefore the bears protected to a certain extent. If this were not the case, the local farmers would have wiped them out long ago.”
Other animals Martin (57) encountered on his island travels included a huge colony of seals on San Miguel island off the West Coast, the Chincoteague ponies from an island of the same name off the Virginian coast, and an abandoned dog named Sally on Puerto Rico, the US-ruled Caribbean island devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017.
“Her owners probably hadn’t been able to look after her once the hurricane struck and most likely had left her in a forest in the hope she would be able to fend for herself,” says Martin. “We found her on the road and our driver – also a dog lover – said he knew of a dog refuge that would take her. Before we dropped her off, we went back to our driver’s house and met his two pugs. Sally and one of the pugs had a bit of tussle and she trapped its tail in her mouth and refused to let go! Eventually we managed to prise her mouth open. The pug was unharmed but its corkscrewlike tail was now as straight as a poker. I believe it did curl back eventually!”
Islands of America isn’t Martin’s lone TV outing this February. Towards the end of the month his new sitcom Warren, about a grumpy ‘Victor Meldrewesque’ driving instructor, airs on BBC1 and in March he starts filming the ninth series of Doc Martin. “I just hope people don’t get sick of me,” he says almost apologetically. Not much chance of that!
■ Islands of america starts on tuesday evenings on Itv in early February.