While not overt in doing so, House M.D. takes more than a few cues straight from the Sherlock Holmes stories and succeeds in standing as a unique adaptation of the renowned literary giant. House M.D. is an award-winning medical drama that aired on the FOX Network from 2004 to 2012, starring Hugh Laurie. Laurie's portrayal of Dr. Gregory House, often regarded as the most charismatic fictional doctor, became one of the most beloved in medical TV history. The show follows the arrogant Dr. House, who struggles with an addiction to pain medication and clashes with his team of diagnosticians due to his unconventional procedures but always correct results.
House M.D. adapts Sherlock Holmes in a modernized way, but contrary to similar updates on the tale like Elementary and Miss Sherlock, any new viewer can watch the whole series and grow to love it without ever making the connection. At first sight, it sounds like a stretch to compare both geniuses based only on the eccentricity of their minds when solving their respective cases, but a long list of deeper similarities settles the parallel between the two. Here's how House M.D. gives a unique spin to the timeless detective.
The most direct references to the source material are small but quite easy to spot. The name Sherlock Holmes was rather unusual for its time, and House followed suit. But rather than feeling satisfied with that, series creator and avid Sherlock Holmes fan David Shore took advantage of the silent 'L' in 'Holmes' to find a close but sufficiently distinct word that also worked as a believable surname. That's how the name got attributed to the character and, subsequently, the title of the show, which had the working title Chasing Zebras, Circling the Drain - due to the puzzling nature of the cases the doctor and his team had to solve. In fact, House's famous surname also takes a symbolic role in the climactic moment of the season 7 finale when his resentment against his ex-girlfriend, Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), and her possible new love life after their breakup reaches its highest point. High on pain killers and frustration, he drives his car into her house and totals her dining room, clearly symbolizing his desire for self-destruction.
House's loyal colleague, James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), almost exactly replicates the name of John Watson, assistant and dedicated right-hand to Sherlock Holmes. Watson is also a surgeon and an expert in medical matters, while Wilson is the head of the Department of Oncology at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, where the series takes place. They both support their respective friends while trying to save them from their addiction to self-diagnosed drugs and their self-destructive personalities. As if that wasn't enough, both of them share the 221B address with their eccentric friends - Wilson on short but frequent periods and Watson permanently. The apartments serve both sharp duos as headquarters where they long for cases to solve.
In the books, John Watson needs a cane to walk after he's wounded by a bullet while fighting for the British Army in the Battle of Maiwand against the Afghans. However, it's not James Wilson who walks with the aid of a cane in House M.D., but the titular doctor instead. Around five years before the beginning of the show, House suffered an aneurysm in his right leg, which went misdiagnosed and led to his thigh muscle becoming necrotic. Instead of amputation, he opted to keep his leg and risk a future of severe pain, which developed his Vicodin addiction, a powerful painkiller drug prescribed for short-term pain relief. Holmes, meanwhile, suffered the same addictive behavior with cocaine and morphine, which allowed him to escape his overactive brain and soothe his compulsion for solving all kinds of conundrums.
House is a puzzle solver by nature, filling his free time with video game sessions (he owns several portable video game consoles throughout the series) and a particular hobby of collecting running shoes, despite the condition on his leg. He's also an extraordinary piano player, similar to the talent with the violin that Holmes shows in his spare time. Watson has other pastimes, though - he's regarded as a “ladies’ man”, as opposed to Holmes. In the second book in the series, The Sign of the Four, it's suggested that Watson had lovers over at least "three separate continents". James Wilson shares this affinity and also Watson's habit of placing his friend over his romantic interests even when it ends tragically, as is the case with Dr. Amber Volakis (Anne Dudek), who dies in a bus crash after receiving a drunk call from House. Contrary to Wilson and Watson, House and Holmes only ever love a single woman: Cuddy for House and Irene Adler for Holmes. The latter actually gets name-dropped and referenced a couple of times - namely the patient from the first episode, Rebecca Adler (Robin Tunney).
The plot of House M.D. could have started with the characters being inspired by one of the most important works in literature and gone an infinite number of different ways afterward, but that wasn't the case. Despite a deeply-rooted arrogance throughout the series, House learns to evolve with the passing of each season. The diverse range of patients from all backgrounds and the wild circumstances that lead them to his care always defy his compulsive fascination with trying to outsmart everyone around him. Sure, he's used to the gratification after all of those cases end up proving him and his "it's never Lupus" motto right (with a few exceptions), but he slowly caves in to his own excruciating personality and the lingering burden of his hubris until he reaches a point where he seeks to heal his deepest emotional scars.
In the case of Sherlock Holmes, he's also used to be on top of every case he tackles. Many loose ends appear to slow down his investigations and force him to challenge himself to look at the puzzle from a different point of view, but he always assures that his strongest point is his logical thinking and his lack of emotions. It's only when a case puts his most personal facets at stake, like in The Final Problem - the short story from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes that introduced his archenemy Professor Moriarty - that he opens up to accept a much-needed change to his reckless behavior.
In that story and his numerous adaptations, Sherlock Holmes sees no other sensible alternative than faking his death in order to deceive Moriarty's network of assassins after he defeated him in hand-to-hand combat. For a certain time, Watson and the loyal readers of the novels missed him so much that Doyle agreed to give him a triumphant comeback. Similarly, House is forced to fake his death in a burning building after fleeing jail time for the aforementioned car incident and then goes back to his friend Wilson to accompany him in his last five months after he was diagnosed with cancer. Both Holmes and House are introduced as socially inept addicts and ultimately prove themselves to be honorable altruists with a heart.
House M.D. doesn't succeed because of its source material, it succeeds because it gives a clever and fresh redesign to the ever-growing exploration of the Sherlock Holmes detective archetype, proving that a story can be told forever if every new version is genuine and unique enough to stand on its own.
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