House

FOX has renewed the hit drama series HOUSE and BONES for next season. HOUSE, picked up for its fourth season, stars two-time Golden Globe winner Hugh Laurie as Dr. Greg House, a brilliant and unconventional physician with a brutally honest demeanor.

BONES, picked up for its third season, stars Emily Deschanel as forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan, who can read clues left behind in victims bones, and David Boreanaz as FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth. These unlikely partners take on homicide cases involving human remains most forensic specialists cant handle.

HOUSE is the No. 1 drama on FOX as well as the No. 3 scripted series on all networks in Adults 18-49, and the No. 2 scripted series on all networks in Adults 18-34 and Teens. The series Jan. 30 episode was the highest-rated scripted telecast of the 06/07 season on any network among Adults 18-49 and the highest-rated scripted telecast on any network in nearly a year.

In its most recent airing this past Tuesday, Feb. 13, HOUSE posted its highest rating ever among Adults 18-49 (tied with its telecast on 1/30/07); the shows highest-rated broadcast ever among Adults 18-34, Teens, Women 18-34 and Men 18-49/18-34; and its second-highest ever among Total Viewers (behind 1/30/07), while achieving the highest retention of its AMERICAN IDOL lead-in among Adults 18-49 (86%) and Adults 18-34 (93%).

BONES has also had an impressive run. Last week, for the second week in a row, the series posted its highest rating in nearly a year among Adults 18-49. BONES Total Viewers number last week (12.6 Mil.) tied as its highest ever, and its highest ever without an AMERICAN IDOL lead-in.

HOUSE is from Heel and Toe Films, Shore Z Productions and Bad Hat Harry Productions in association with NBC Universal Television Studio. Katie Jacobs, David Shore, Paul Attanasio, Bryan Singer and Dan Sackheim are executive producers.

BONES is from Josephson Entertainment and Far Field Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Barry Josephson, Hart Hanson and Stephen Nathan are executive producers.

Kristen from E! says that the team from Scrubs have set their fourth episode of the latest season to be an episode that makes fun of the FOX show House, M.D.!

The fourth episode is titled “My House” and makes a total mockery of FOX’s Gregory House. Apparently Dr. Cox will solve several medical mysteries in a short period of time.

This should be good, and if they market it in the right way, they could also garner some House fans along the way.

Congratulations Hugh Laurie for his role in House.

Here’s a snippet from his speech:

Stunning, absolutely stunning. I’m speechless, literally without a speech. It seems odd to me when people are falling over themselves to give you things… nobody offers you a free acceptance speech. There’s a gap in the market… I’d love to pull out a speech by Dolce and Gabbana.

Tuesday, January 30th at 8:30pm

Golden Globe-winner Hugh Laurie and the team are back as brand new episodes of House premiere on Tuesday, January 30th at 8:30pm on 3.

Although show producers are keeping quiet about what this series will entail for our favourite grumpy doctor, they will divulge that this season has no shortage of exotic ailments and diseases, and that House dives right back into his work after getting shot in last year’s cliff-hanger finale – although not quite as well as he would have hoped.

Also, stay tuned to see House get busted by the feds, which will result in a new recurring character.

For Cambridge-educated Laurie, who lists classmate and fellow British actor Emma Thompson among his close friends, working on an American TV show was not exactly high on his priority list (his earlier credits include classic British shows like Black Adder and Shakespeare plays like Sense and Sensibility). However, the call of a show as good as House made him change his mind.

“I never actually wanted to make an American TV Show,” Laurie admitted to Entertainment Weekly. “But when you’re sent good material, you follow it, whether it’s American TV, Latvian TV or a travelling circus in Iceland.”

Although Laurie is adamant it wasn’t the gruelling work schedule that put him off American television (six episodes a series is the norm in England; American goes up to anywhere as high as 24), it is a tough workload for Laurie.

“I didn’t read the contract before signing – big mistake,” Laurie jokes of his intense workload. But on the bright side, “It’s not coalmining. That’s what people say, isn’t it? They’re absolutely right to be sceptical that acting is hard. Still, any job is hard if you care how it turns out, and easy if you don’t. I could go out and do brain surgery if I didn’t care if the guy lived or died.”

In fact, Laurie is so dedicated to House that he couldn’t even be pried away by executive producer Bryan Singer to star as Perry White in Superman Returns. Rumoured to get so deep in character that he can’t even de-House himself while on the set, his co-workers marvel at his ability to multi-task whilst playing the irresistibly cranky and sarcastic House.

“You know, for Hugh, it’s not just about showing up and saying a few lines,” says Jennifer Morrison, who plays Dr. Cameron on the show. “He’s saying medical terms constantly. He’s got huge chunks of medical terms to memorise. And then, along with the accent, he’s got the limp and then figuring out how to handle all the props because he’s only got the use of one hand. He’s constantly juggling – and that’s a lot to think about when you’re just trying to act.”

Robert Sean Leonard, who plays House’s bemused best friend Dr. James Wilson on the show, agrees that Laurie is dedicated to the show, stating, “I show up every week and do like, eight scenes. Hugh does, like 40. I would shoot myself in the mouth if I were him.”

Well, we’re all praying Laurie doesn’t shoot himself in the mouth, but tune in to see how he recovers from being shot on the show when new episodes of House commence on Tuesday, January 30th at 8:30pm on 3.

House co-stars Jennifer Morrison (Dr. Allison Cameron) and Jesse Spencer (Dr. Robert Chase) got engaged in Paris over the holidays. The two met while filming the series pilot in 2004.

See more.

Grammy Award-winning and multi-platinum recording artist and actor Dave Matthews, founder of the Dave Matthews Band, will guest-star on an upcoming episode of HOUSE. Matthews will play Patrick, a savant and virtuoso pianist who suffered a severe neurological impairment as the result of an accident when he was a child. Kurtwood Smith (That 70s Show) will guest-star as a former physician and Patricks father, who must make a potentially life-altering decision about his sons treatment. The episode is directed by HOUSE executive producer Katie Jacobs and is tentatively scheduled to air in March. HOUSE airs Tuesdays (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX.

After Patrick is admitted to Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital with a rare movement disorder, his case attracts the attention of Dr. House (Hugh Laurie). House is intrigued as to why Patrick, who was a healthy 10-year-old at the time of his accident with no prior musical training, could suddenly play the piano flawlessly after suffering a severe injury. While trying to deduce the origin of the brain rewiring responsible for Patricks mysterious gift of music, House and his team must stop the deadly cerebral bleeding that is now threatening his life.

Since their formation in 1990, Dave Matthews Band has sold more than 35 million albums worldwide to date and over 14 million concert tickets since 1992. In 2003, Matthews released his first solo album, Some Devil. The albums first single, Gravedigger, won Matthews a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance in 2004. Dave Matthews Band recently released their first retrospective, The Best of Whats Around, Vol. 1, a unique double disc set representing the bands versatile strengths on stage and in the studio. The band is currently in the studio working on their forthcoming album, which will be released this summer.

This year, Matthews will star in the independent family drama film Lake City, playing a villain opposite Sissy Spacek and Troy Garity. His other acting credits include the role of Otis in the film Because of Winn-Dixie, opposite Jeff Daniels.

Kurtwood Smith spent eight seasons playing the hugely popular Red Foreman on That 70s Show and is currently shooting the cable pilot Insatiable opposite Andie MacDowell. His television credits also include Malcolm in the Middle, “The X-Files,” 3rd Rock From the Sun, “Star Trek: Voyager,” “Deep Space Nine,” “Picket Fences” and, most recently, as a famous FBI criminal profiler on Medium. He was seen in the telefilms “A Bright Shining Lie,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “While Justice Sleeps,” “Doorways,” “The Christmas Gift” and The Nightmare Years, for which he received a CableACE Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Another good,solid, mid-season offering from Numb3rs last night. While I don’t love it as much as I do NCIS, (yay for topping the ratings this week!) I do really enjoy the dynamic between the blokes. Judd Hirsh, who I remember from his “Taxi” days is always good. Even the perpetually irritating Peter McNichol, who has annoyed the carp out of me in almost everything else I’ve seen him in, is tolerable in this.
Although almost everyone else is annoyed at the disappearance from Friday night of 24, I’m pleased to see House back. I only discovered the pleasures of Gregory House this year, as I’m one of those people who are never in on Friday night. Now, of course, I know it’s worth taping. I’m looking forward to catching up on whatever episodes TV3 sees fit to throw my way.
Speaking of video, I now have more Sharpe on video that you could poke a stick at, thanks to UKTV showing 14 105 minute episodes over the weekend. I’ve never seen any of them before, but have heard my fangirl internet friends raving about it for years. Finally I get to find out what the fuss is about. I’ve managed to watch 2½ episodes so far – apparently the fuss is about a young Sean Bean in uniform. Mmmm.