Regional Identity - Doc Martin

One of the first characters that we see in the clip is Doc Martin, in this clip the plumbers are in the foreground and he is in the background and he towers over the over two characters. This shows that he is more important than the other two characters and he has higher authority. In the clip they are positioned like a podium. The young plumber is the lowest down, and then the father is higher up than him, then Doc Martin towers over the both of them again showing that he is more important. We can see from very early on the clip that Doc Martin is of a higher class than the others, we can see this from the way in which he dressed. He is wearing a suit which shows high authority, and a better paid job, it also shows that he is quite powerful. Doc martin speaks in Standard English, again showing that he is of higher class as the other people in the clip don’t speak Standard English. Also both of the plumbers have an accent whereas Doc Martin doesn’t, this shows us that he is of a different regional identity, and this is backed up by the way in which he acts and dresses. For example when he comes into the room he asks the plumbers (the locals) what a word means, this shows that he isn’t used to how they speak. When Doc Martin takes the dog to the police he is very abrupt, he doesn’t want to stay and talk to him he just wants to get rid of the dog. Also he has dismissive body language; he always walks with his hands in his pockets showing that he is quite reserved and doesn’t really want to speak to anyone. Doc Martin is also quite highly strung, we can see this when the women in the street comes up to him and starts to talk to him, he doesn’t want to talk to the women so he carries on walking.

Another character in the clip is the young plumber, we first see him in a low establishing shot doing his job, as his dad sits there and eats his sandwich, this shows that he is a harder working than his dad, or maybe his dad is just training him. He is wearing overalls and he has a pencil behind his ear, this shows that he has a lower paid job as people who have a status normally dress smarter rather than doing labour work. The son also has an accent, this shows that he is from the area, as it matches the locals’ accent, but you can see that Doc Martin is not a local as he doesn’t have an accent. You can hear from the way that they speak that the characters are not equal, this is because Doc martin seems more intelligent as he doesn’t have an accent, but the young plumber does, showing that he is maybe less intelligent. Although the son doesn’t adhere to the regional identity, we see this when he begins to speak about the topic, he is an intelligent character. This doesn’t match the regional stereotype as the rest of them are doing manual labour jobs, showing that they are less intelligent than people that have office jobs. When he begins to talk the son stands up showing that he is higher than his dad, this shows he is more intelligent but it wasn’t expected. When there is a water leak all of the local characters seemed to be quite laid back about it but Doc Martin is the opposite of that as he is worried about it.

The older plumber is introduced to us at the same time as his son, we can see that he isn’t doing much work, just sitting eating a sandwich, showing us that he seems to be a quite laid back character. He thinks that he is a higher status than his son and has more power, this is shown in the way he addressed his son, he refers to him as boy even though he is a young man, and this shows that the dad thinks that he is a much higher status than his son. This is backed up by the camera as in the early shot he is higher up than his son but is lower than Doc Martin, showing that he is in the middle of the two; he would like to think he is anyway. When Doc Martin asks him what the word means he keeps stuttering and takes his time to get the meaning out. This is portrayed in the length of the shot; the shot goes on for around 16 seconds this shows that the dad drones on a lot. The water leak incident is another little clip that shows us that he is a laid back character. He doesn’t get up to help with the leak or even think of a way to stop he, he just carries on eating, this shows that he is very laid back and doesn’t really care about what is happening. At the same time Doc Martin is rushing around trying to stop the leak. We can tell that the dad is a local from his accent the way in which he speaks, he has an accent that matches the rest of the locals, he is also the one that Doc Martin asks about the word that he doesn’t know, and this suggests that he is a local as he knows what it means. Also nobody in the village seems to have a high quality job such as an office job, they all seem to be in manual labour, as he is again suggesting he is local.