House (TV series)

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House
House title screen
Genre	Medical drama
Creator(s)	David Shore
Starring	Hugh Laurie Omar Epps Lisa Edelstein Robert Sean Leonard Jennifer Morrison Jesse Spencer
Opening theme	"Teardrop" by Massive Attack (varies from country to country)
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	63 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	approx. 43 minutes/episode
Broadcast
Original channel	FOX
Picture format	480i (SDTV), 720p (HDTV)
Original run	November 16, 2004 – present
Links
Official website
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

House, also known as House M.D., is a critically-acclaimed American medical drama television series created by David Shore and executive produced by film director Bryan Singer. The Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning medical drama debuted on the FOX Network on November 16, 2004.

House stars English actor Hugh Laurie as the American title character, a role for which he received the 2006 and 2007 Golden Globe Awards and 2007 Screen Actor's Guild award for Best Actor in a Drama. The third season of House premiered on September 5, 2006, in the United States and Canada. In February 2007, House was renewed for a fourth season.^[1]

1 Characters
- 1.1 Recurring characters
- 1.2 Characters appearing in multiple episodes
2 Plot
3 Awards
4 Episodes
5 Response
6 Production information
7 DVD releases
8 Notes
9 External links

[edit] Characters

Main article: List of House characters

Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) – The show's protagonist, he is the head of the Department of Diagnostic Medicine, an infectious disease specialist, and nephrologist.
Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) – Department Head: Oncology.
Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) – Administration: Dean of Medicine; endocrinologist.
Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps) – Fellow, Diagnostic Medicine; neurologist.
Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) – Fellow, Diagnostic Medicine; immunologist.
Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer) – Fellow, Diagnostic Medicine; intensivist.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The cast of House in a promotional picture for the third season.

[edit] Recurring characters

Brenda Previn (Stephanie Venditto) – Head Nurse, Matron
Coma Guy – Nameless character whom House 'visits' for lunch, or to watch a TV show. Not to be confused with "Vegetative State Guy" Gabriel Wozniak (John Larroquette), who was awoken by House.
Steve McQueen – Dr. House's pet rat which he caught one day in Stacy's attic.

[edit] Characters appearing in multiple episodes

Edward Vogler (Chi McBride) – Billionaire owner of a pharmaceutical firm and former board chairman of the hospital. (Season 1)
Stacy Warner (Sela Ward) – Dr. House's ex-girlfriend ^[2], with whom he used to live, and former lawyer for Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. (Seasons 1 and 2)
Mark Warner (Currie Graham) – Stacy's husband. (Seasons 1 and 2)
Ali (Leighton Meester) – 17 year-old daughter of a clinic patient who becomes infatuated with House. (Season 3)
Michael Tritter (David Morse) – Police officer with a grudge against Dr. House (Season 3).

[edit] Plot

Dr. Gregory House is a maverick medical genius who heads a team of young diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey. Most episodes start with a cold open somewhere outside the hospital, showing the events leading to the onset of symptoms for that week's patient. The episode follows the team in their attempts to deduce the illness causing the patient's problems.

The team arrives at diagnoses using the Socratic method and differential diagnosis, with House guiding the deliberations. House often discounts the information and opinions from his underlings, assuming their contributions to miss relevant unconsidered factors. The patient is usually misdiagnosed two or three times over the course of each episode, almost always including such diseases as sarcoidosis, and treated with medications appropriate to those diagnoses that cause further complications. Often the ailment cannot be easily deduced because the patient has lied about symptoms and circumstances — lied about having an affair that led to the mystery disease, about an underlying disorder that led to the mystery disease, about jobs that led to the mystery disease, and so on. As a result House frequently mutters, "Everybody lies," or proclaims during the team's deliberations, "The patient is lying." Even when not stated explicitly, this assumption guides House's decisions and diagnoses.

House's begrudging fulfillment of his mandatory walk-in clinic duty is a recurring subplot on the show. During clinic duty, House confounds patients with eccentric bedside manner and unorthodox treatments but impresses them with rapid and accurate diagnoses after seemingly not paying attention. He often plays video games on his Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP (later in the series he plays on a Nintendo DS and after that a PSP) while patients talk to him, and in one episode House diagnoses multiple patients in the waiting room in under five minutes on his way out of the clinic. Realizations made during some of the simple problems House faces in the clinic often help him solve the main case of the episode — ironic, because he claims to hate working in the clinic.

Several episodes feature the unusual practice of entering a patient's house with or without the owner's permission in order to search for clues that might suggest a certain pathology. The creator, David Shore, originally intended for the show to be a CSI-type show where "germs were the suspects",^[3] but has since shifted much of the focus to the characters rather than concentrating solely on the environment.

[edit] Awards

Main article: List of House awards

House received a Peabody Award in 2006, for what the Peabody board called an "unorthodox lead character – a misanthropic diagnostician" and for "cases fit for a medical Sherlock Holmes," both of which helped make House "the most distinctive new doctor drama in a decade."^[4]

Creator David Shore won a writing Emmy in 2005 for the first season episode "Three Stories."^[5]

In 2006 and 2007, Hugh Laurie won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Drama, and in 2005 he was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series.

Also in 2007, Hugh Laurie won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Male Actor in a Drama Series.

[edit] Episodes

Main article: List of House episodes

Season	Episodes	Originally Aired
Season 1	22	2004–2005
Season 2	24	2005–2006
Season 3	24	2006–2007

[edit] Response

Before it premiered on November 16, 2004, House received early critical acclaim — so much so, that FOX used a quote from The Washington Post in its ads for House stating that the show is "the best medical drama since the debut of E.R.".

The show's procedural structure, bizarre scenarios, and headlong dives into controversy via the hazardous and sometimes blatantly illegal conduct of the characters has gained the show some detractors.

Professional critics, however, have focused their attention on the complex inner life that British actor Hugh Laurie brings to the title role, and much of the media's attention has been focused on him. The characterization of House himself, as a brilliant, irascible, grating and oddly sympathetic personality, as played by Laurie, is what has been credited with the show's success:

New York Magazine: "With House, we are in the hands of professionals: accomplished actors playing doctors who come to care about their patients, whose afflictions range from tapeworms to brain tumors."^[6]

USA Today: "Any series that matches a great actor with a great character is halfway home."^[7]

Washington Post: "'House' introduces us to the most electrifying new main character to hit television in years. No, the show is not about a house or even life as a house; it's about life as Dr. Gregory House, who, as played perilously close to perfection by Hugh Laurie, catapults this FOX series into a select group: the finest shows of the season."^[8]

Numerous publications have named it one of the best shows of the year.^[9]

[edit] Production information

House is aired by the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a co-production of Heel and Toe Films (Paul Attanasio and Katie Jacobs), Shore Z Productions (David Shore), and Bad Hat Harry Productions (Bryan Singer) in association with the NBC Universal Television Studio (formed after General Electric, the owners of NBC, bought Universal Studios from Vivendi Universal) for FOX. All three companies are responsible for production and all four people are executive producers of the show. David Shore's ideas for House, M.D. are inspired by the writings of Berton Roueche.^[10]

The 58th Primetime Emmy Awards and Creative Arts Emmy nominations recognized Derek R. Hill, Production Designer and Danielle Berman, S.D.S.A., Set Decorator for their "Outstanding Art Direction For A Single-Camera Series" for the FOX Network series, House, M.D. produced by Heel and Toe Productions, Shore Z Productions and Bad Hat Harry Productions in association with Universal Television Studios.

As of season 2, episode "TB or Not TB", a German production company, Moratim, is credited in the copyright notice instead of Universal Network Television. (Moratim Produktions GmbH & Co. KG, of Pullach im Isartal, Germany). Moratim produced five episodes.

[edit] Casting

The producers were reportedly dissatisfied with early auditions for the role of House. When Hugh Laurie cast on the audition tape, he apologized for his appearance as he was filming Flight of the Phoenix at the time of the casting session.^[11] Laurie's audition tape compelled director Bryan Singer to get up out of his chair to get as close to the television screen as he could.^{[citation needed]} Laurie's American accent was reportedly so flawless that Bryan Singer singled him out as an example of a real American actor, being unaware of Laurie's background.^[12] Laurie later stated that his original impression was that the show was about Dr. James Wilson, as the script referred to him as a doctor with "boyish" looks, assumed this to be the star and that Dr. House was the "sidekick" (the show was not yet titled House at that point). It wasn't until he received the full teleplay of the pilot that he realized that House was the protagonist.^[13] Laurie, whose father was a doctor himself, said he felt guilty for "being paid more to become a fake version of my own father" after being cast as House.^[14]

[edit] Theme music

The opening theme is "Teardrop" by Massive Attack. "Teardrop" itself does have lyrics, sung by guest vocalist Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins; however, the version used in the opening credits uses only the beginning and ending sections, which are solely instrumental. Due to rights and licensing issues this music is not used for the show in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Switzerland (German version), Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, Denmark, Australia, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Hungary, Latin America, Greece, Hong Kong and Turkey. In those countries, a piece of music named "House" (ending theme), composed by Scott Donaldson and Richard Nolan, is used, which was written specifically for the show. With the second season, this was replaced with a similar, but modified, track. This theme tune, however, is only used in the televised broadcast. In the DVD release (Season 2) the original (American) theme is used. In Italy opening themes for season 1–2 and season 3 are switched, so that the original 'Teardrop' is used for season 3, while both Season 1 and 2 use the edited version. The parodic British television show Dead Ringers, which sometimes spoofs House, uses "Teardrop" for the spoof's opening theme. "Teardrop" is also used in the season 2 region 2 and region 4 release, replacing the "House" theme at the beginning of the episode.

[edit] Filming

Exterior shots of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital actually are of Princeton University's Frist Campus Center, which is the University's student center (a disproportionate number of these shots show a UPS truck sitting in the hospital driveway, implying that several of the overhead shots of the hospital that are used in the first three seasons were actually taken on the same day). Filming does not, however, take place there.^[15] It instead takes place on the FOX lot in Century City. Exterior shots of the university campus are filmed at UCLA and USC.^{[citation needed]}