How do you solve a problem like dermatitis?

I couldn't say why the first few episodes of House, M.D. produced little reaction in me at all. It was late at night, and I was possibly not in the mood (aka sleepy). By the time I had got to the last episode of disc one, however, I was suddenly proclaiming this one of the best shows on telly. Well, it at least has a lot of potential. I think it's got a way to go in the subtle development of the characters.

"I find your interest... interesting"

Something that this show has which most others don't, is some sense of style to it. It's shot a bit better than the average tv show, sometimes composed and directed more like a movie, an idea which I guess is becoming more and more common on the tube. Maybe it's Executive Produer Bryan Singer's influence, who directed a couple of episodes in the first year and even cameod (probably before flying off to make the new Superman flick). The most obviously stlylish element to the show is the regular camera tracking into the nose and other parts of the human body providing a nice visual representation of the disease of the week. I initiallly dismissed this trickery, but it has grown up, actually providing much needed educational benefits and the producers have cannily only used it sparingly (what, in an American show?). I've also noticed some nice wide lens shots of the hospital corridors and a couple of nice diopter type shots (ie. extreme foreground person or object in focus to one side and an extreme background object or person also in focus on the other side of frame) which would not be out of place in a Carpenter flick.


Maybe not surprising, Singer and Creator/Executive Producer David Shore have assembled an impressive production crew. Episode directors included feature directors Peter Medak, Keith Gordon and Tim Hunter (Tim? When the hell you gonna make another film? Please?). Singer shot the pilot in a strange muted color style which was (maybe surprisingly, but thankfully) not carried over to the series. It may have been an experiment, it may have been a technical issue, but it did not do the first episode any favors (and may be another reason I did not take to the show initially).

About three episodes in, I realised what this show was about. Or at least on it's most obvious level. It's a cop show. House is Sherlock Holmes. Even down to the brilliant arrogance. Each week the good guys (the doctors) come across an unknown bad guy (an illness). Out comes the whiteboard (just like in Numb3rs) as our heroes try to solve the mystery illness. Geddit? House even gets his trainee doctors to often vissit the scene of the 'crime' so to speak. Adding to the complexity of the show, is that our numero uno hero, Dr. Greg House (Hugh Laurie) is an insufferable prick. He's like Becker, only worse, but has signficant medical experience to back up his Holmesian deductions on a weekly basis. Laurie is superb, not only providing a reputable American accent, but providing his character with so much humanity and pathos it's sometimes frightening to watch. He is put in compromising positions ethically almost every episode, and always throws the book right back in the audience's collective faces.

One of my doubts with this show was the development of the characters. Initially, it was highly entertaining - with House's witty one liners, it's young and attractive supporting cast, it's mystery illness of the week, regular visit to the patient's house to search for clues (with their damned Firefly blue gloves no less!) and the parade of cooky characters House treats at the clinic (in one episode Shirley Knight rocks up, all eighty years of her and comes on to Dr. House). But I worried (around the mid point of Season One) that they're going to have to move these characters along. And sure enough they did. They didn't change them overnight. And they didn't change them in some grand fashion. Slowly, but surely they creeped some reasonable dilemna to this mix.

Sometimes I felt cheated. Sometimes I felt manipulated. And occassionally it got so sacharine, I wanted to hurl. But there was always Dr. Greg to come through. His dark sarcasm shines right up the final moments of the first season. Probably the highlight episode was "Three Stories" which seemed to finally successfully break away from the strict template the writers had forced onto themselves up to that point. Forced to lecture a group of students on a teacher's sick day, Dr. House begins to tell three simultaneous theoretical stories about a farmer, volleyballer and Carmen Electra to entertain and educate the students. As the stories progress, it becomes clearer and clearer that House is in fact talking about his own leg problem 5 years earlier. It should have been obvious from the first moments of the episode this is where the episode would go as House's ex (Sela Ward) arrives during the opening moments of the episode.

"I think about Ashton... all the time"

Another element to the show I quite liked is the use of modern (or not so modern) medical technology. In one episode a girl swallows a tiny camera embedded inside a capsule. In another, House retrieves small toys from a baby's nose using a powered magnet.


The casting is for the most part spot on. Omar Epps (who was also a regular in ER briefly) is rock solid as Foreman. Early in the season Foreman took a lot of racist crap from House, but once House turned on Chase, a begrudging respect developed between them. This dynamic was one of the more manipulative devices utilised by the writers over the season. Jennifer Morrison is someone who has been working for around ten years, but her role as Cameron is probably her biggest break so far. She's quite lovely and it will be interesting to see what happens (if anything) with her character's relationship with House. Jesse Spencer was the real surprise for me. He's quite good as Chase. Chase's development as the turn-coat during the period the hospital is run by Volger is plausible and well-played. What surprised me was that Spencer is an Australian. And he got to keep his accent - and not downplay or overplay it. It's been a while between drinks seeing Robert Sean Leonard (Dr Wilson) in anything(!) and it's a welcome return. Seriously, I think the last thing I saw with him was that great Chris Reeve telemovie In The Gloaming where Leonard played a man dying of AIDS. The closest thing to a friend that House has, Wilson has problems of his own that Leonard downplays beautifully and almost disappears into the scenery like great invisible acting should do. Lisa Edelstein is also excellent as Dr Cuddy, House's superior. Her turns from interrogatory to sympathetic for House are believable on a dime and their reparte is sometimes particularly Tracy-Hepburn like.


The roster of guest performances is quite incredible: Robin Tunney, Stacy Edwards, the wonderful Roxanne Hart (who I don't think I've seen since Highlander), Kurt Fuller, Shirley Knight, Mike Starr, Art LaFleur, Meredith Monroe (who I couldn't place for ages, then it came to me: Andie in Dawson's Creek), Sarah Clarke, Joe Morton, Peter Graves, Matt Molloy, Carmen Electra and Sela Ward.

"Carmen Electra? The Baywatch chick?" "The Baywatch thespian"

I must single out a few performances though: Leslie Hope (who played Kiefer Sutherland's wife in the first season of 24) is absolutely stunning as Victoria the homeless woman who is eventually discovered to have rabies. Her performance is ferociously courageous and if she didn't nab any awards she certainly deserved to. The episode 'Cursed' includes three great performances: Daryl Sabara (and who would have thought that after only the three Spy Kids movies), Nestor Carbonell (a long way from Batmanuel) and Tracy Middendorf (who started her career playing Carrie Brady on DOOL) as a family coping with their son's illness which may or may not be anthrax. Chi McBride has one of the most unenviable parts to play as Vogler, a character designed to make life difficult for House, but in the end lasted only a few episodes. I'm not sure what the point of this mid-season dilemna was? The set-up was juicy - Vogler comes in as the new director of the hospital and starts ordering House around and begins threatening House to sack one of his own people. Frustrated, Vogler sacks Wilson and threatens more if House doesn't agree. In the end (and rather quickly) the tables are turned and Vogler is dropped from the hospital (along with all his money). There was too much promise in this to be ended so quickly, and the characters dynamics really didn't have time to build. Maybe the writers were still finding their feet?

Music is also an important element to this show. Massive Attack is beautifully used in what must one of the briefest opening title sequences to a television show ever. "You Can't Always Get What You" is used in the last episode (and echoes dialogue from the first episode), the Dave Matthews "Some Devil" and "Baba O
Riley" are all nicely integrated into the themes of their respective episodes.


"I'm Australian." "You put the Queen on your money. You're British."

The DVD's themselves are solid, but unexceptional. The episodes are not widescreen (their R1 counterparts are) which is yet another in a long line of unexplainable titles in this situation. The extras are entertaining, but very slight. "The Concept", "Casting Sessions with Hugh Laurie", "Medical Cases", "Set Tour", "House-ism" and "Dr. House" are a series of brief featurettes (with the all important handy-dandy Play All function) that add up to approx. 25 minutes of behind the scenes clips and interviews with Shore, Singer, Exec. Producer Katie Jacobs, Laurie, Consultant/writer David Foster, Morrison, Spencer, Edelstein, Epps and Sela Ward.