Hugh Laurie

2004 · 8 Seasons · Fox · Medical Drama

Hugh Laurie's Gregory House remains one of the most magnetic characters in television history, a misanthropic genius who turned medical diagnosis into detective work and made cruelty entertaining for eight seasons. The show's procedural formula was reliable to a fault, and the revolving door of team members in later seasons diluted some of what made the early years special. But when House M.D. locked into the tension between its lead character's brilliance and his self-destruction, nothing else on network television came close.

2016 · 1 Season · BBC One · Spy Thriller

The Night Manager is a glamorous, perfectly cast spy thriller that proves John le Carre's slow-burn espionage can work as prestige television event programming. Tom Hiddleston is magnetic as the undercover operative, Hugh Laurie is terrifying as the arms dealer, and the six-episode structure means not a single scene is wasted. The show trades some of le Carre's moral complexity for visual spectacle, but the result is one of the most stylish and gripping limited series of the decade.

2004 · 8 Seasons · Fox · Medical Drama / Mystery

Hugh Laurie's Gregory House is one of the great television characters, a brilliant, abrasive, Vicodin-addicted diagnostician whose intelligence is matched only by his capacity for self-destruction. The show built eight seasons around this one performance, and Laurie delivered so consistently that the procedural formula never quite wore out. The medical mysteries follow a reliable pattern and the supporting cast rotates more than most fans would like, but when the writing focuses on House himself and his tortured friendship with Wilson, it produces some of the finest character drama of the 2000s.

2020 · 2 Seasons · HBO · Comedy, Sci-Fi

Avenue 5 is Armando Iannucci's space-set satire, featuring Hugh Laurie as the useless figurehead captain of a luxury space cruise ship knocked off course. The show's razor-sharp political humor and committed ensemble cast produce brilliant individual moments, but the confined setting and repetitive crisis structure wear thin over two seasons. Fans of Iannucci's Veep and The Thick of It will recognize the DNA, even if the results are less consistent than those landmarks.