(This review from Australia, in the plague year 2020).
This is a wonderful episode of Doc Martin, effortlessly pulling off a series of transitions and pivots (to use the 2020 favourite stockmarket term) in a very humorous manner. First, the funeral of Aunt Joan leads to replacement Aunt Ruth (Eileen Atkins, wonderful setup, initially dour for reasons we come to understand). The aunts of Doc Martin provide through the series a lot of connections to the doctor's broader family, and give all 9 seasons a B plot arc of the aunts' life on their farm. I loved the sly humour of the relationship between the doc (who's "on the spectrum") and Ruth who shares these family characteristics, how the doc in his usual Superdoc guise diagnoses that she's not actually dying of lupus and wonderfully says to her "I'm sorry but you're not dying", she gives him a hug (wonderfully awkward because they are both not touchy-feely).
And then the episode sees the doc, initially for a period of some months, not actually leaving the village to return to London: a geographical non-transition. Additionally we see the first appearance of the Morwenna (Jessica Ransom) as the new receptionist - whom we all come to love all the way through to the end of series 9 and hopefully series 10 being shot in Cornwall in summer 2020.<
And to cap it off, Louisa (Carolyn Catz) has borne Martin's and her son, and returns with Martin. Carolyn Catz is positively luminous in this episode (she and Martin Clunes and team must have been having a lot of fun, as the often spiky demeanour of Louisa became much gentler in this episode). A shout out for the wonderful dog-handling: I've never seen a series which has done better with finding appealing dogs to pop up in unanticipated places for Martin to dislike and us to enjoy.
It's wonderful to see a team absolutely on top of their game: wonderful writing, great acting, deft direction and lots of really sly humour deftly handled. A wonderful uplifting episode, which achieves a major foundational setup for the 5 seasons to follow.