House is a show that I enjoy but don’t follow. And having caught an episode this evening, I can’t imagine me watching another one for a while. My feelings are shaped considerably by Hugh Laurie’s portrayal of the good doctor.

Apparently a key reason that a Brit ended up in the role was because they couldn’t find an American actor willing to make himself so unlikeable. See also the popularity of Simon Callow Stateside: the man speaks the truth, however unpalatable, and that’s something at a premium in a country which, more than the UK, showers its children with praise for their clumsy efforts at becoming performers, however painful the results for anyone watching.

Gregory House’s form of honesty is incisive diagnostic skill, delivered with a hefty side order of sarcasm. Which would normally make him someone to be hated, or at any rate admired only grudgingly. But the show’s creators were canny enough to give him a limp and a walking stick, which hints at tragedy in the shorthand of the small screen, and lo and behold Laurie’s character attains another dimension; two is about right for a lead in an American drama series.

Anyway, several seasons in, the show has found a comfortable formula with its patient who has something inexplicably wrong that worsens with every ad break until House cracks on with the solution, having done what he can to goad it out of his team of juniors. And this is what makes the show work: cranky genius is attractive. And we know he’s a genius because the medics assisting him use bigger words than we do to describe what’s up with the patient, which makes them smarter than us the audience, and hence House even smarter in turn.

To be fair, it can work very well. House’s thing is looking for systemic solutions, underlying principles which account for the whole array of symptoms that a patient is experiencing. And that has a certain Holmesian quality, attractive to watch as House groups together symptoms and explains why they do or don’t explain what the patient is experiencing. It’d be petrifying to go through as the patient, but for the armchair viewer it’s compelling stuff, as House joins the dots and saves the day.

Leavening this heady stuff is the interplay of personalities within House’s backing group. And tonight’s episode did something pretty smart. They’re dealing with a woman who feels that her life is best devoted to supporting those who are brilliant, having decided to accept that she is ‘average’ (please note: the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of Normality has yet to identify any human being who conforms to statistical norms). The parallels with the backing group’s relationship with House are obvious, and it made for a touching tale as, along with her illness, the patient lost her job supporting her particular highflyer and decided to change her aim in life.

The other business, also nicely conducted, was to do with getting House and someone he’s thought of as a friend to talk and for that friend to stay at the hospital rather than moving on. Only, that went into an interesting direction when the friend announced at the end of the episode that he considered his friendship with House over, if indeed it had ever existed. An interesting ‘ouch’ moment, House having opened up with the guy and showed some vulnerability in the process.

All of which goes to show that with a protagonist as individual as House, the writers have to reach that bit further to come up with a resolution that fits the lead and the tone of the series. No heartfelt exultations and hugs here: instead, the chill of a friendship that may never have been. An unusual climax, and one entirely appropriate to this singular show.