Nothing lost in translation for medical drama ‘House’

It's not Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood. Not Jennifer Hudson or Chris Daughtry. It's not even Sanjaya, William Hung or that "Pants on the Ground" guy.

As "American Idol" (8 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, KVVU-TV, Channel 5) enters its audience-voting phase for the last time -- at least the last time that matters, given that a sizable chunk of that audience is expected to follow Simon Cowell out the door at the end of this season -- it's worth celebrating the musical juggernaut's biggest impact on pop culture: a 40-something curmudgeon with a limp and an unhealthy reliance on pharmaceuticals.

No one at "American Idol" had anything directly to do with "House" (8 p.m. Mondays, Channel 5), although the entire Princeton-Plainsboro staff could have spent a sweeps month just trying to diagnose Paula Abdul. But the exposure it gave the series as a lead-in midway through its first season helped take the medical drama from mediocre ratings and elevate it to the most-watched TV series in the world.

In fact, "House" had such an inauspicious start, leading man Hugh Laurie didn't even remember auditioning for it, despite having read for both the part of House and his best friend, Wilson.

"I sent it in, and I thought no more about it, because that's the way it goes," Laurie said of his audition tape last month during the National Association of Television Program Executives convention at Mandalay Bay. "There are sort of lottery aspects to it. You buy a ticket, and you put that ticket away, and you don't really think about it."

When he heard months later that the series was moving forward, Laurie was caught off-guard. "I actually said, 'Sorry? What medical show?' I'd completely forgotten about it."

Things became more memorable, though not in the way Laurie might have preferred, when he flew from his native England to L.A. for a meeting that included director Bryan Singer, of "The Usual Suspects" and "X-Men" fame, who'd signed on to direct the "House" pilot and serve as an executive producer on the series.

"I went, and (the other executive producers) were sitting in an office with Bryan Singer, who was eating a tuna salad. And he didn't stop eating his tuna salad while I auditioned. I remember that," Laurie recalled, with a mixture of hurt and bemusement. "Which was odd, because I'd flown 5,000 miles. You'd think the man would really put the fork down."

Once Laurie was cast, most of the other pieces that make "House" such a success -- the doctor's mantra "everybody lies," his general disregard for authority and his lack of interest in his patients -- were in place from the first episode. It just took airing after the ratings behemoth "Idol" for viewers to find it. And once they did, there was no stopping "House."

The drama was seen by 81.8 million viewers in 66 countries in 2008, the most recent year for which numbers have been compiled, far surpassing past winners "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and "CSI: Miami."

And even though "House" is a vastly better show, those numbers still are surprising, given how much easier the pithy lines of the "CSIs" -- not to mention David Caruso's constant fiddling with his sunglasses -- must be to convey to different cultures.

"It is a constant amazement to me that other countries are able to fasten on to this show, because I think of it as being more specifically verbal than any other show that I know of," Laurie said.

"You know, we don't really have that many car chases or ticking bombs or exploding helicopters" -- "I'm always trying to get more in," he joked -- "but what we do have are very, very complicated ideas being bandied back and forth with a very particular verbal tone. And somebody somewhere is doing an absolutely magnificent job of translating these ideas into Flemish.

"We're dubbed into I don't know how many languages," he continued. "It's an astonishing process to think of. But we're very grateful to somebody somewhere with a large dictionary and thesaurus."

For Laurie, the words remain the same, he just has to translate them from his natural British inflections to House's American accent. And, six years in, he admitted it remains a constant struggle.

"During a shooting day, I'm listening to myself all the time. I mean, every syllable, I'm sort of checking as it gets between here (pointing to his throat) and here (pointing to his mouth). I'm having to sort of edit myself.

"I find it as difficult now as I did to begin with."

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.