‘The Pitt’ Meets ‘Sherlock’ in Fox’s 8-Season Masterpiece Series

For those who have fallen in love with the critically-acclaimed medical drama The Pitt, the news that the show has been renewed for a third season – before the Season 2 premiere, no less – was welcome, albeit tempered by the fact that it won’t premiere until January 2027. For fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s iconic deerstalker hat-wearing detective, the news is mixed: Young Sherlock has been well-received on Prime Video, but CBS’ Watson has not been renewed for a third season, and an animated series is only in production now, with no premiere date announced as yet. So fans of both have two choices: binge all eight episodes of Young Sherlock and wait patiently for the return of Noah Wyle and company; or watch all eight seasons of a masterpiece series that combines the best of both worlds: House.

An Utterly Brilliant and Deeply Flawed Doctor Centers ‘House’

House premiered on Fox on November 16, 2004, a medical drama centered around Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), arguably the most unconventional doctor in television history. He’s arrogant, caustic, and bitter. Severe, chronic leg pain has caused House to rely heavily on Vicodin, to the point of addiction. Hospital rules and procedures don’t apply to him, a belief that puts him at odds with Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein), the administrator of New Jersey’s Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. He relentlessly picks at and mocks his fellow doctors, and lest you think he puts that aside for his patients, he doesn’t: House treats everyone horribly, effectively alienating everyone in his life, save for Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), the Department of Oncology head and the only person House can call friend.

Despite this, he is rarely challenged, for one reason: House is a medical genius. He is the Head of Diagnostic Medicine, a position that allows him to flex his brilliance against rare, mysterious conditions that others have failed at diagnosing (even in real life: doctors in Germany used clues from an episode to diagnose a patient with severe heart failure). His credo of “everybody lies,” built around the idea that patients can’t, or won’t, fully reveal all of their symptoms, leads House to make diagnoses based on subtle clues from the patient.

He’s aided by a team of diagnosticians, which over the course of the series has seen the likes of Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer), Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps), Dr. Remy “Thirteen” Hadley (Olivia Wilde) and Dr. Lawrence Kutner (Kal Penn). The team brainstorms, pitches their own theories, tests out House’s sometimes-controversial hypotheses, and – because it takes a team – challenges House’s ideas. It’s a literally thankless position, but they stay to learn from the best.

You Can’t Look Away from ‘House’

House’s team may stay for their own reasons, but why did viewers stick around for eight seasons? Simple: you can’t look away from House, the character and the TV show. House is a decidedly unlikable character, but, in Laurie’s deft hands, there’s a vulnerability in House that keeps him from leaning so far into “villainy” that the show becomes unwatchable. And there are cracks in the veneer that we’re privy to: the empathy he shows his patients, the way he sticks up for his team (he can berate them, but God help others who do), and the charm he can turn on, if he has to. And when he’s utterly broken, as he is in Season 7’s “After Hours,” it’s gut-wrenching to watch. But there’s also a guilty pleasure in hearing Laurie’s comedic leanings in House’s sarcastic wit, if we’re being honest, and while he’s a powerhouse – no pun intended – the rest of the cast is up to the challenge.

Like The Pitt, House is intent on medical accuracy, with producers enlisting the help of Yale internist Dr. Lisa Sanders and two other technical advisers. Not that they’re completely married to the idea, with Dr. Sanders recounting one instance:

“I recall one where this boy is depicted as having a rash in his mouth that they were calling ‘bacterial vaginosis.’ That’s a total violation of language. You can’t get that disease in your mouth. I wrote a long e-mail to the producer and he wrote back to say, ‘Yeah, but it’s funnier my way.’ It made me crazy. But, of course, he was right: His way was funnier.”

The show’s likening of House to Sherlock Holmes is intentional, with Collider suggesting that House even “quietly outplayed” Benedict Cumberbatch‘s iteration of the character. The way he solves mysteries, his own Dr. Watson in Dr. Wilson, and even the Vicodin addiction, a nod to Sherlock’s use of a 7% solution of cocaine. All that said, there’s lots of time before The Pitt‘s return to binge House and Young Sherlock. Hm. Young House has potential, don’t you think?