One of the great things about the Internet is that you can watch TV shows that you missed the first time around.
And so we find ourselves watching House, a series that ran for eight seasons (2004-2012) and 177 episodes, winning cartloads of awards and consistently posting high ratings.
Okay, it’s a doctor show. Like Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey, from my youth. But this one is different because it’s focused on the title character, Dr. Greg House, medical genius, master diagnostician, and total pain in the butt, played by Hugh Laurie. You’d never guess he was an Englishman. If his face looks familiar, you probably saw him a while ago in some episodes of Blackadder.
Why focus on this character? Because he’s so weird. He won’t obey hospital rules, he doesn’t like anybody, he will freely insult anyone at any time, he’s addicted to pain pills, and he’s brilliant. The show’s creators patterned him on Sherlock Holmes: and if you see a similar quirkiness in Laurie’s Dr. House and Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes, it’s probably intentional.
Now my wife finds this show richly entertaining because she’s into medical stuff. I’m not. In fact, I don’t even like to think about hospitals and such. Sometimes it seems there are more diseases than there are people, each of ’em just itching to get a crack at you. And when House and his colleagues get to yakking about what’s wrong with the patient, my eyes kind of glaze over. They might as well be talking backwards. Meanwhile my wife is enthusiastically nominating all sorts of diseases that I never heard of as candidates for whatever’s threatening the patient with a quick demise. It’s not unlike watching a football game with an avid and very knowledgeable fan who keeps predicting what play will be called in the huddle and what the defense will try to do about it.
I can’t get into the disease part of the show. But the performances are top-of-the-line and the characters are compelling. Every now and then a patient’s loved one has more than he can take and punches House in the nose. I’m surprised his underlings have never tried to poison him, or at least drained the brake fluid from his car. It makes you wonder why no one ever belted Sherlock Holmes.
Meanwhile, amazon has most of my books for sale with serious discounts. Surprised you with that, didn’t I? Just the kind of nervy thing that House might do. But it’s true–big discounts on the paperbacks, just in time for Christmas.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just click “Books” and see covers, blurbs, and sample chapters. They’ll speak for themselves.
I think you’re the one I heard about Jeremy Brett’s ‘Sherlock’ from. I’ve watched a lot of those episodes and they are brilliant. He’s brilliant. He’s the best Holmes actor 😀
I always wondered why no-one punched him myself. I thought that one of the people who worked them would do it.