Summary

• House is a modern Sherlock Holmes adaptation, transitioning from medical drama to detective mystery over several seasons.
• Dr. Gregory House mirrors Holmes with his logic, brilliant mind, and antisocial tendencies, both using drugs to cope with flaws.
• House became a true Sherlock surrogate when compared to 2010's irascible, egotistical, and clever version of Holmes in BBC's Sherlock.

Since its 2004 debut, House has been considered by many to be a modern interpretation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary detective Sherlock Holmes, yet for all their surface similarities, it wasn't for several seasons into House's run that the show became an explicit adaptation. Although House is set in a hospital, its status as a medical drama was always superseded by its mystery elements. This often meant that it had much more in common with detective and crime shows than predecessors like ER, making comparisons to characters like Sherlock Holmes inevitable.

House's typical mystery-of-the-week format makes it much more akin to investigative shows such as NCIS, with House himself cast as the lead detective. However, there are reasons why Sherlock Holmes is specifically cited as an influence, and why it took six years for the comparisons to be fully justified.

Why House Is Always Compared To Sherlock Holmes

Their Stories And Abilities Are Incredibly Similar

While House shares some traits with many great fictional detectives, it is Sherlock Holmes with whom he has the most in common. Like Holmes, House has an uncanny ability to use remorseless logic to get to the root of the crime – or, in his case, illness. Often, this methodology seems completely opaque to those around him, until all the pieces fall into place. He is also a talented polymath with an aptitude for music, followed by a loyal friend who is simultaneously iring of and exasperated by his brilliance, and possessed of an ability to emotionally detach himself from his cases.

House is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Peacock

Perhaps most interestingly, House and Holmes are also connected by their flaws. Both characters are famously antisocial, with Holmes relying on Dr. Watson and Mrs. Hudson for company in much the same way that House interacts with Wilson and Cuddy. The two characters also suffer from drug addiction, with Holmes recreationally taking cocaine and morphine and House struggling to manage his Vicodin consumption. Yet while the superficial similarities have been ever present, it took a very specific development in Sherlock Holmes' history for the House comparison to become more than skin deep.

House Is Incredibly Similar To Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock

They're Much More Alike Than A Traditional Sherlock Holmes

Although House's abilities and habits demonstrate his connection with Sherlock Holmes, it was only when Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss revived the character in 2010 for the popular BBC series Sherlock that House's similarities became impossible to ignore. Unlike previous versions of Sherlock Holmes, where the clearest connection to House was the brilliance of the protagonists, Sherlock made the detective just as irascible, unpleasant, and annoyingly ingenious as Hugh Laurie's iconic character. As a result, it's not unfair to say that it was only with Sherlock's arrival that House became a true Holmes surrogate.

Given how House responds to attempts to manage him, it's clear that he has much more in common with the 2010 version of Sherlock Holmes than the 19th-century original.

Unlike traditional versions of Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch's take on the character emphasized his unpleasantness, ego, and narcissism – all traits shared by Hugh Laurie's House. Sherlock also played up Holmes' contempt for authority, with the detective's relationship with Scotland Yard much rockier than what is seen in the novels. Given how House responds to attempts to manage him, it's clear that he has much more in common with the 2010 version of Sherlock Holmes than the 19th-century original.

House Is Actually Very Different From Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Stories

Sherlock (2010) Made House A Proper Sherlock Holmes Adaptation

Digging below the surface, it becomes clear that there's just as much that divides House from Conan Doyle's Sherlock stories as there is that unites them. For one thing, Holmes can be extremely personable in his dealings with clients, displaying genuine moments of empathy alongside the remorseless logic of his brain. This is very different from House, who is actively hostile in the way he treats patients – proving particularly contemptuous of any task he considers beneath him. While there are elements of this vanity in the original stories, it is much closer to Cumberbatch's interpretation in Sherlock.

Given that House predated Sherlock by six years, it is difficult to say the extent to which one influenced the other. In fact, it seems much more reasonable to suggest that House's depiction of a prickly, brilliant, often aggressive detective was as much of an influence on Moffat and Gatiss' characterization as the original Holmes stories were on the series. But it's also important to note that, because Sherlock and House have such similar protagonists and slickly irreverent storytelling styles, they have much more in common than House does with Conan Doyle's much-loved classic stories.