Brutally honest

"You haven't told me what's wrong with her," says the mother who's brought her daughter to see the medic.

"She's very annoying," is the doctor's diagnosis.

The situation, like many of his patients, doesn't get any better. "I'm not Mrs, I'm divorced," the same woman tells him.

"I'm not surprised," comes the doctor's tactless response.

By this third series, Martin Clunes has got his fish-out-of-water doctor down to a T. Forced out of his well-paid London surgeon's job due to a slight problem - he can't stand the sight of blood - he ends up in a sleepy Cornish village populated by comic stereotypes and a schoolteacher with whom he enjoys an on-off romantic relationship.

Nobody does curmudgeonly better than Clunes, although he's hardly stretched in this opening episode. A hyperactive child, a blind man with gout and a sleeping policeman (who falls asleep in the middle of a conversation) are among patients that he treats with an off-handedness that's a pleasure to watch because we all wish we had the courage to be like that sometimes.

He tells it like it is. Why, the odd job man asks him, am I so depressed? Because, Doc Martin tells him, he's lonely, bored, unloved and past his prime. Who says the NHS isn't working?

The doctors in Extraordinary People are treating little Alex Connerty, from Liverpool. He's never going to grow to be more than 3ft tall as he has a rare form of primordial dwarfism with a very long name that doctors helpfully refer to as MOPD Type 2.

There are less than 100 cases worldwide. Alex's type of dwarfism means his body is in proportion but also comes with restricted life expectancy and the fear that a brain aneurysm could kill him.

His parents decide to take him to the US for a brain scan, a potentially fatal procedure as he's had problems being put under anaesthetic in the past.

Like Doc Martin, we know what to expect from the Extraordinary People series by now - a rare condition, a helpless child, lots of medical jargon and a few tears. This episode had all that but was made particularly moving by Alex's parents' obvious devotion to their child, the reaction of their other children to a brother who's different and the sight of Alex enjoying the company of other little people at a convention in Seattle.

Parents John and Sue are particularly honest about their feelings towards Alex's conditon and his possible treatment. "Sometimes you wonder if you've done the right thing," says John, reflecting on the often-impossible decisions they have to make over their son's future.

They worry that, at two, he's still not walking, talking or feeding as other children of his age. More than anything, John wants him to be able to get about on his own two feet.

How emotional it is to see the joy when, after US doctors have a £500 pair of special shoes made, Alex takes his first steps almost instantly after putting on the new footwear.

There was a time when a new film by British director Ken Loach would have been an event. His latest, It's a Free World..., premieres without much fuss on C4 tonight.

Written by his regular collaborator Paul Laverty, the film takes us inside the world of the immigrant labour market through Angie (Kierston Wareing) and Rose, who set up a recruitment business in London.

This is a determinedly gritty slice of modern life where laughs are rarer than at a Jim Davidson concert. "Get a job in a nursery or something," Angie is told as she becomes immersed in the world of gangmasters, violence and illegal labour rackets.

It doesn't have the scope or scale of Loach's last movie, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, although there's no doubting its honesty to do the right thing by exposing society's injustices through film. It's never going to find as wide an audience as Doc Martin but cinema's loss is the TV viewers gain.