Hey!  Got a new TV series in mind?  Looking for an actor to play the quintessentially American male lead?  No problem.  Hire an Englishman.  Several of the hottest series on TV have done the same.  Don’t believe me?  Then let’s start by reaching into the recent TV past.

House, MD., played by Oxford-born actor Hugh Laurie.  The lead and title character : Dr. Gregory House, Head of Diagnostic Medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital in New Jersey, and probably one of the most infuriating characters ever on TV.

House is a diagnostician nonpareil.  He is brilliant, passionate, charismatic, dogged, determined, a gifted musician, but has a serious character flaw: he hates people, and doesn’t like to talk to, or even go near patients.  He is cynical, volatile, selfish, manipulative and cruel.  His humor is juvenile, he publicly mocks and humiliates his employees and his boss, and he constantly takes advantage of the one person he considers a friend.  He suffers muscle wastage in one thigh that has left him lame and in constant pain, and blames the world for his condition.  He takes Vicodin for the pain and has become addicted to it.

Yet, despite all his bad behavior, and believe me, it is legion, all the other characters stand up for him, apologize for him, cover for him, and the audience always roots for him.

The actor Hugh Laurie is himself an athlete and a gifted piano player (yes, that’s him actually playing in the show).   He is best known in Britain for his comic roles as the dimwitted noble Prince George, Prince Regent in the Blackadder series opposite the brilliant Rowan Atkinson of Mr. Bean fame.  You might also remember him in the part of the equally dimwitted aristocrat, Bertie Wooster, in the hilarious Jeeves & Wooster opposite Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his long-suffering personal valet, protector, and straight man.  The popular TV series was based on the Jeeves stories by British author P.G. Wodehouse.