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    I don't know if anyone has seen this American drama starring Hugh Laurie, but if you haven't, I thoroughly recommend it.

    Some would call this series standard American tv fare based on tried and tested formulaic methods and this is true, but it is also very well written and Hugh Laurie is brilliant.

    I haven't watched any episodes of House for about 7-8 years. I got up to about the fourth season and let it "rest" there for a "while." American tv series' are long and all time consuming and after watching around 40 episodes, decided that was enough for then. But, I've picked up where I left off with this series and it is still as fresh now as it was back when it was originally aired on tv.

    The show is very humorous and basically a medical version of Sherlock Holmes. House has to solve the mystery while insulting his underlings and making sexist remarks to his female boss as well as constant un PC jokes about blacks, Jews and disabled people to boot and all within a 45 minute episode. I love it!

    For a time, Hugh Laurie was the highest paid actor on American tv, he deserved it. You wouldn't know, going by his performance in this tv show, that he is in fact a pompous British actor. I never did like him in any of his British shows, I utterly hated Jeeves and Wooster as an example, but this is fabulous.

    Have you seen this show? Did you like it?

    All season's of House are currently available to purchase on Amazon Prime.

  • Yes, seen it. Laurie is brilliant. I also liked him in the Blackadder series.

    House is enormously politically incorrect and has a certain unreal feel to it that moves it into an urban fantasy sort of dimension. House's personality is complex sometimes, childishly singular at others, and his Asperger type tendency to say what he thinks and do what he likes place him outside the box of almost every social convention. He gets on with people the way bulls get on with china shops. ^^

  • I can't take Hugh Laurie seriously unfortunately though I know he's a good actor. I remember him from his A Little Bit of Fry and Laurie era where they would do sketches starting off as serious quickly turning into absurdity. I keep expecting to see it when he's in a serious role...

  • He's a good actor, imo. Great comic actor as well as straight. Plus he can do an American accent. American accent is difficult. I admire someone who could be bothered. I feel the same way about American actors who do British accents when necessary. Of course if they screw it up like the notorious efforts of Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins, then they should be placed in the stocks.^^

  • Yes, seen it. Laurie is brilliant. I also liked him in the Blackadder series.

    House is enormously politically incorrect and has a certain unreal feel to it that moves it into an urban fantasy sort of dimension. House's personality is complex sometimes, childishly singular at others, and his Asperger type tendency to say what he thinks and do what he likes place him outside the box of almost every social convention. He gets on with people the way bulls get on with china shops. ^^

    I used to work with a lot of people like that. Boris Johnson is of the same ilk too.

    I think they simply couldn't care less what others think of them. They know they're super brains and top of the feeding chain, so why bother trying to conform, when they've got nothing to prove to anyone. They're at the top of the hill looking down on all others. The contradictory flip side to their behaviour is that they crave attention and will do almost anything to get it.

    Although I liked Blackadder, Laurie played the same character, until House, that he's always played.

  • I can't take Hugh Laurie seriously unfortunately though I know he's a good actor. I remember him from his A Little Bit of Fry and Laurie era where they would do sketches starting off as serious quickly turning into absurdity. I keep expecting to see it when he's in a serious role...

    This is a serious role, Hoxton.

    Although there is comedy in this, it is dark. Try a few episodes and see what you think.

  • He's a good actor, imo. Great comic actor as well as straight. Plus he can do an American accent. American accent is difficult. I admire someone who could be bothered. I feel the same way about American actors who do British accents when necessary. Of course if they screw it up like the notorious efforts of Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins, then they should be placed in the stocks.^^

    There is on youtube somewhere, or was, the interview he did to get the job. As the producers put it, he nailed it. No wonder he became the highest paid person in American tv for that role.

    I agree about then when actors do actually act, rather than just play an extension of themselves, it is brilliant and the results clearly show on screen, or not, as in DvD's case.:rolleyes:

  • Loved the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins and Dick can dance like magic there. Which is right because the Disney film is a story of the fairy godmother as a governess. And the chimney sweep knows who she is, what she is and shares part of her realm in the way children share the realm of Faerie. But the Cockney accent didn't happen. They should have done a voice over. They did it for Eliza in My Fair Lady for the songs.

  • Just continuing my binge watch of House. :)

    Any other House/Hugh Laurie fans here?

    I was a huge fan in the early seasons. He and Wilson were a classic odd couple. Forman was the perfect patsy enabling House to call a spade a spade, Cuddy was the perfect butt (in both senses) for sexual harassment by House. Cameron was a sweet lovesick young independent-minded feminist, except for her infatuation with House (or an obsessive need to conquer one of the few guys who showed no romantic interest in her, in total defiance of the "he saw, she conquers" rules of play).

    In the last few seasons it lost its cutting edge and became silly rather than satirical or cynical. The script writers ran out of good solid or faintly plausible ideas under-scored with a medical morality or conundrum, and regressed to flimsy fantasy situations. Increasingly House himself was scripted to drift away from a take-no-prisoners intellectual integrity into an insensitive inconsiderate asshole, which exposed his acting style as too repetitive and mannered.

    So far I'm greatly enjoying The Good Doctor, which is on Sky Living. It's a well-scripted medical "Rain Man". Only 2-3 episodes so far, so try Sky Catch-Up

  • Not seen the more recent seasons of House yet, after about 60-80 odd episodes, I decided to take a break from it. What you're talking about is what Hoxton was mentioning here or in another thread, that the length of American series' tend to be very long with far too many episodes and the series' just get milked for every bit of money they can get out of them.

    Not seen the Good Doctor yet. The young actor in that, Freddie Highmore, was a former kid actor and I have been watching him in his former series Bates Motel which is excellent and I highly recommend. It's about a young Norman Bates from the Psycho films.

    As the actor is playing a similar-ish type character (minus the homicidal tendencies this time) in the Good Doctor, I didn't fancy it. But he's very good, so will give it a try in the future.

  • Not seen the more recent seasons of House yet, after about 60-80 odd episodes, I decided to take a break from it. What you're talking about is what Hoxton was mentioning here or in another thread, that the length of American series' tend to be very long with far too many episodes and the series' just get milked for every bit of money they can get out of them.

    Not seen the Good Doctor yet. The young actor in that, Freddie Highmore, was a former kid actor and I have been watching him in his former series Bates Motel which is excellent and I highly recommend. It's about a young Norman Bates from the Psycho films.

    As the actor is playing a similar-ish type character (minus the homicidal tendencies this time) in the Good Doctor, I didn't fancy it. But he's very good, so will give it a try in the future.

    Yes, I can see that Freddy Highmore is a dead ringer for Norman Bates.

    It's an amusing paradox that actors often get an inside track for an award if their part is to be physically or mentally crippled. The paradox is that once they've found the right "acting device" that depicts their impairment, the part is a breeze.

    The Good Doctor series is in danger of being becoming minor variations on a theme. My initial attraction to it was that it featured Richard Schiff (Toby Zeigler from my all-time fav, West Wing) but sadly his part in Good Doctor isn't big enough.

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