in the UK in May 2010. The same year, she played Louisa in the dark comedy film Wild Target. Atkins and Jean Marsh, creators of the original 1970s series of Upstairs, Downstairs, were among the cast of a new BBC adaptation, shown over the winter of 2010–11. The new series is set in 1936. Marsh again played Rose while Atkins was cast as the redoubtable Maud, Lady Holland. In August 2011, it was revealed that Atkins had decided not to continue to take part as she was unhappy with the scripts. In September 2011, Atkins joined the cast of ITV comedy-drama series Doc Martin playing the title character's aunt, Ruth Ellingham. She returned as Aunt Ruth for the show's sixth series in September 2013, the seventh in September 2015 and eighth in September 2017. Atkins starred as Lady Spence with Matthew Rhys in an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's The Scapegoat, shown in September 2012. She has portrayed Queen Mary on two occasions, in the 2002 television film Bertie and Elizabeth and in the 2016 Netflix-produced television series The Crown. Atkins portrayed graduate school professor Evelyn Ashford to Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson) in Wit, a 2001 American television movie directed by Mike Nichols. The teleplay by Nichols and Emma Thompson is based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winning play of the same title by Margaret Edson. The film was shown at the Berlin International Film Festival on 9 February 2001 before being broadcast by HBO on 24 March. It was shown at the Edinburgh Film Festival and the Warsaw Film Festival later in the year. Radio Atkins had a guest role in BBC Radio 4's long-running rural soap The Archers in September 2016, playing Jacqui, the juror who persuades her fellow jurors to acquit Helen Titchener (née Archer) of the charge of attempted murder and wounding with intent of her abusive husband, Rob. Personal life Atkins was married to actor Julian Glover in 1957; they divorced in 1966. (A day after his divorce, Glover married actress Isla Blair.) She married her second husband, Bill Shepherd, on 2 February 1978. Shepherd died on 24 June 2016. In 1997, she wrote the screenplay for Mrs Dalloway, starring Vanessa Redgrave. The film received excellent reviews but was a box-office failure. It was a financial disaster for Atkins and her husband, who had invested in it. She said of this incident: "I have to