TV ScopeHouse Hallmark channel, 9pm Sundays At great personal expense to myself I agreed to watch this new offering from the US. Billed as the answer to every hospital soap addict's dreams I switched over from my usual Sunday night fix of Scrubs and ER to the Hallmark channel.
House is both the name of the principal character and the name of the programme itself. It features Hugh Laurie as an unconventional hospital consultant. Gregory House is an infectious diseases expert with a flawed personality. Lurching around the corridors with the aid of a stick, we are informed that he recently suffered an infarction in his thigh, necessitating the permanent use of a cane.
Refusing to wear a white coat, this designer-stubbled, unkempt doctor gets his jollies by being rude to his colleagues and avoiding face-to-face contact with his patients. The reason? People always lie and therefore he reckons that it's a waste of his time to interact with them. Charming!
Despite having the bedside manner of a half-starved rottweiller, his staff treat him with undue reverence. Tolerating his rudeness on the basis that he is "the best God dammed doctor in the world", any hint of humanity his character may have is well hidden beneath a thick layer of grouchiness.
In this first episode Dr House takes on the case of a young teacher who, for no apparent reason, develops epilepsy. Everyone else is convinced that her problem is the result of a brain tumour. But House has other ideas and sends his team off to break into the patient's home to gather clues.
The information that she's not Jewish and has several slices of ham in her fridge leads him to diagnose a tape worm in the brain. I doubt that even a highly trained neurosurgeon would have seen that one coming.
We were treated to very graphic shots of a tracheotomy being performed, up close and personal pictures of tape worms and their grubs and not too genteel resuscitation procedures. The addition of these unsavoury vignettes added nothing to the programme nor did they help move the story along.
Hugh Laurie plays the part well. He is much better acting the embittered, pain-killer addicted, abrasive doctor with an American accent than he ever was playing a toffee nosed, plummy voiced prat.
The other characters who featured in this episode were unfortunately stereotypical: the black resident with a previous criminal history; the floppy haired doctor who despite his flaky attitude comes up with a brilliantly simple means of confirming the patient's diagnosis; the defensive token female doctor, who, given where she could have got on the back of her stunning good looks, bravely chose medicine as a career. And let's not forget the gusty, designer shod medical director who, despite her frosty exterior, we all know that she's just a big pussy cat underneath it all.
The patients were also a bit bizarre. One was bright orange and was diagnosed by the good "doctor" as having a wife who was having an affair. A patient wondering if he was suffering from ME was treated with a course of "Smarties". All consultations were carried out in an uncaring, dismissive manner.
The script has been described as "being as sharp as a scalpel". Quite possibly, but obviously the scalpel was used to break stone first. All I can say to the hype that proceeded the programme is that if House was a patient, I'd be advising the relatives to switch off the life support machine. It lacks charm, sex appeal and humour. But, above all, it lacks humanity.