The idea of Hugh Laurie playing a wiseass American doctor held zero appeal when I first heard of House. And when some smart people whose opinions I have time for started to sing the show’s praises…I continued to ignore what I was hearing, this time because of a petulant refusal to check out what some clued-up friends were recommending. Besides, I’d half-watched some episodes when they’d popped up on tv, and hadn’t been pulled into what was happening.

You’ll have realised that this stubborn unwillingness to enjoy something because others like it is exactly the kind of wilful against-the-grain behaviour that makes Gregory House such an interesting character. We’ve all got a bit of a refusenik about us somewhere in our character, and House has finessed that awkwardness into a way of life. It helps that he’s a brilliant thinker, teasing out the truth from situations that others are baffled by. And when those others are themselves a bunch of smart medics, who we as viewers are inclined to think are brighter than we, at least in the context of their professional skills, then it’s clear that this House guy is quite something.

That alone is quite an achievement. Often when writers seek to demonstrate the brilliance of their protagonists, they do so by surrounding them with numpty-heads. Not House. The character’s thought processes are front and centre of a thoroughly engaging drama that’s focused firmly on the many layers of an idiosyncratic healer who is by no means healthy himself. Quite the opposite; House is a wounded healer, and completes the shaman archetype by having undergone the experience of death and rebirth.

Wow. Big stuff for a primetime tv show. And yes, it really is big stuff. I’m only as far as the third season at this point, and I’ve rarely if ever seen such a nuanced and three dimensional portrait of a thoroughly human character. So, he’s an irascible genius. And we know sooner or later he’s going to reveal softer elements…don’t we? Only, they’re an awful long time coming, and bound brilliantly with the structure of the series. House isn’t going to display his soft centre, if he has such a thing, without a struggle. And one episode captures that beautifully when he goes on a road trip with a patient he’s woken from a coma, and whose heart he wants to transplant into his dying son. That’s a powerful enough concept already: the patient knows he will slip back into a sleep from which he will never awake. And he’s a powerful man, not used to being under the thumb of others, so he regains his sense of power by forcing House to answer intimate questions about his past…the only circumstance in which House would do such a thing, and with real dramatic urgency attached because of the son’s life being at stake. Masterful stuff.

House episodes typically follow the same structure, in which a patient with a mysterious condition is first misdiagnosed before House and his team determine the correct prognosis. It works just fine, when the stories are as well crafted as they are. And makes the episodes that don’t fit that template all the more compelling. It’s a fascinating accomplishment, and one only possible in series drama: 20 regularly structured episodes and then a couple that go off-piste. Which they certainly do – those particular stories are breathtaking in the ways they deftly deal with matters of identity, ethics, and truth.

Personally I find those more idiosyncratic episodes more powerful than Christopher Nolan’s use of mentally stimulating material in his work – I get the sense with him first that he’s more interested in concepts than character, and second that he is referencing the brilliance of others rather than demonstrating brilliance himself. To reach for and surpass what Nolan is praised for in the form of a popular tv drama is a huge accomplishment, and brings to mind Michael Moorcock’s assessment of the work of science fiction novelist Philip K Dick, who had many of the same concerns as the House team: “Dick quietly produced serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise”.

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