74HOUSE - TIE

Aired: FOX, 2004-2011

Creator David Shore's series came along a decade after ER and gave the medical drama a jolt, basing a show on a physician who didn't have a God complex so much as a complex that was vociferously godless. Gregory House, played by the British actor Hugh Laurie, was at once an omniscient and irascible figure, priding himself on the lack of comfort he gives. The idea for the procedural was brought to Shore by executive producer Paul Attanasio, who'd been reading a column in The New York Times Magazine called "Diagnosis" by Dr. Lisa Sanders, who became a consultant on House. Shore, at the end of his series' run, told Written By that he never thought of House as a medical drama. It was more an "exploration of philosophical issues. What is reality? What is true?" The rest, he said the office romances, the stubborn mystery of a diagnosis was "just the colorful ribbons we wrap around it."

David Shore on how to keep a show fresh and scripting the end of House