It's funny...when I first saw the show I didn't like his gruff persona or the way he didn't want the dog around.....then I saw an interview with the actor, he was warm and loved animals...he was just playing a part...once I realized it was only a role I understood how well he played it. Now I enjoy the show.

DH and I have enjoyed so many UK series. Our library has almost everything we wanted on DVD. I can't even remember what season we're on with "New Tricks". If you like "Doc", you might like "Reggie Perrin" (with Martin Clunes). I've enjoyed the "Downton Abbey" series. However, we just watched Season Two, Episode 6, and I'm sorry to say it is starting to feel like a daytime soap. Our spinal-injury hero is evidently about to regain use of his 'nether parts', and we've had a case of *amnesia* in the plot. Oh, puhleese! This isn't up to the high standard of the story line thus far -- although The Lady and the Chauffeur is a trite cliche.

Well, I found Doc Martin on Youtube last night, flopped around a bit until I figured out how to watch the pieces of those episodes in order, now may try to find hulu. My education continues. And, instead of retiring at 10pm it was midnite, because I was watching the episodes. It is a great show, low key, but Cornwall reminds me of the Irish countryside as well. If anything, the Irish roads are even narrower, and all those huge tour buses frightened me. Plus, there were rock walls up to the edge of the pavement. I loved it. Where else can you feel like driving in a Grand Prix at 30 miles per hour? Uhhh, kilometres.......cannot wait to go back before I'm so old they won't rent me a car. Our house had just about no places to sit and relax, or do the nicer activities us retired folks enjoy. So we added a 10 x 12 deck. Then enclosed the 10 x 10 porch to make a Lexan-walled sunporch, to house my parrots and allow DH a place to read and watch the outdoors. Then we bumped out the back bedroom to have a walkin closet and a bathtub, because we'd already put in a really tiny 2nd bathroom in the space formerly occupied by 2 tiny closets. I figured we could do without the linen closet and coat closet if it gave us a second crapper and a walkin shower. The footprint of the house, what was under the old roofline, was only increased by the closet/tub bumpout, about 160 sq feet, so the real construction cost for changing the roofline was minimal. However, we did match the stucco exterior to what already existed. Marti, if you are thinking of pushing a bedroom out to the edge of the shallow front gallery porch, I'd begin studying the sunshine it gets there. Quite possibly you could turn that wall into a window seat area with storage on either side so that no change of roofline is required. That is the same way they do attic rooms with reduced headroom where the roofline slopes down. If you are not paying for roofline changes, why not think about doing the same to both of those front bedrooms? I would not want to make the "guest rooms" (the kids' old bedrooms) too cozy and spacious, if you do not want them moving back home. Our neighbors up north have the problem of a son approaching 40 who has never moved out, sleeps all day and works in his room all night designing computer games. This is very restrictive of the parents activities. I just could not do it for long.

Great. I'll have to check for it. I just started watching William and Mary. Martin Clunes is William, an undertaker who is a widower with 2 daughters. Mary is a midwife with 2 sons. They meet in the first episode through a dating service and then the dating and fun begins along with a wealth of misunderstandings, complications, and humor. It was filmed in 2003. Here is a link that might be useful: William and mary