House: The best episodes of Hugh Laurie's medical mystery drama

2004 was a hell of a year for US television. A staggering proportion of shows that premiered that year went on to become either bona fide hits or beloved cult classics: Lost, Veronica Mars, Rescue Me, Entourage, Desperate Housewives, and a little medical drama called House, which premiered on Fox 13 years ago.

A spiky, brainy, somewhat dark re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes starring a little-known British comedian as a very prickly leading man, the show didn't sound like anybody's idea of a guaranteed hit. This was, after all, back when TV anti-heroes were still the exception rather than the rule.

But the show's blend of episodic mystery and strong character writing gathered steam, and throughout its second, third and fourth seasons House was one of the most watched programmes on US television, earning Hugh Laurie a slew of Emmy nominations - though, shamefully, never a win.

Below, Digital Spy looks back on the very best of Laurie's tormented diagnostician, naming our favourite 13 episodes in chronological order.

1. 'Detox' (Season 1, Episode 11)

House's Vicodin addiction was a storyline that never really began or ended, but ran consistently throughout the show and inspired several of its best storylines, as well as a few duds.

With the pill habit largely played for laughs for the first ten episodes, 'Detox' marks the first time it's treated with weight, as Wilson and Cuddy challenge House to go cold turkey for a week in order to convince him he has a problem. (Spoiler: He does.)

Laurie is masterfully subtle at depicting both House's withdrawal and his denial, and the scene in which he breaks his own hand is a compelling glimpse at the self-destructive spiral yet to come. This episode also features a young Amanda Seyfried, for bonus points.

2. 'Control' (Season 1, Episode 14)

Quite aside from the fact that she's played by 24 icon Sarah Clarke, this episode's seemingly unflappable and high-powered Carly stands out as one of the most memorable patients-of-the-week.

Though his team are mystified by what has caused her symptoms, House quietly deduces that she's a self-harmer and bulimic who has irreparably damaged her own heart. Knowing she'll be denied a transplant on those grounds, he lies to the committee to save her life after getting her to admit that she doesn't want to die.

It's an unsentimental yet moving plot, and although we still know comparatively little about House himself at this stage, it's clear why he empathises with Carly's self-destruction.

3. 'Three Stories' (Season 1, Episode 21)

A structurally ingenious yarn that dovetails its initially playful format into an emotionally revealing backstory, 'Three Stories' is arguably the best single episode of House ever.

During a lecture on diagnostics, House presents three scenarios in which a patient complains of leg pain and challenges his students to diagnose them. After lots of enjoyably snarky but essentially predictable back-and-forth with House and his students, the episode flips completely with the revelation that the third scenario is about House, and the infarction that left him crippled.

Witty, thoughtful and impeccably constructed, 'Three Stories' is a masterclass in doing flashback right, and gives Laurie the chance to play a less hardened, more vulnerable version of House. It's also the best use the show ever made of Sela Ward's Stacy, whose ten-episode run in the second season was largely a drag.

4. 'All In' (Season 2, Episode 17)

Following one long night at a glitzy hospital fundraiser, this is one of House's most flat-out fun episodes, not least because it's an excuse to get the aesthetically pleasing cast out of their lab coats and into formal wear.

Split between the poker table and the ER, the episode's glamour and banter is all the better for being placed alongside a relatively high-stakes case of the week, with House desperately trying to save an adorable child whose symptoms mirror those of a former patient whose unsolved death still haunts him.

But it's the comedy that makes the episode, between House remote-controlling Wilson's poker game in order to keep Cuddy busy, Wilson's terrible attempts at speaking in code ("The chicken… is still in Piccadilly Square"), and House spectacularly c**k-blocking Chase mid-chat-up ("Hey! How's that anal fissure?")

5. 'House vs God' (Season 2, Episode 19)

An episode that earns every letter of its ridiculous title, tackling the conflict between faith and science in a smart and character-focused way.

House treating a 15-year-old faith healer is initially just an excuse for him to rant about the futility of faith, but the debate gets an intriguing twist after a cancer patient actually shows signs of improving after being "healed".

And the surprises don't end there. This is one of the first episodes to flesh out Wilson as a complex, flawed character in his own right, and by extension one of the first that allows Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard to really spar – always a recipe for gold.

6. 'No Reason' (Season 2, Episode 24)

The stakes couldn't be much higher for the season two finale – House is shot by a vengeful former patient (Elias Koteas), and spends the entire episode in what turns out to be an elaborate post-trauma hallucination.

Things seem off from the moment House wakes up, and finds himself sharing a hospital room with his shooter (whose name is Moriarty, in one of the show's many subtle Holmes nods) while simultaneously trying to work on another patient's case.

The dreamlike sense of reality collapsing is mesmerising, with House gradually coming to suspect that he's losing his mind as his experiences become more and more nonsensical.

Even in scenes as outlandish as House demonstrating robot surgery on Cameron, the tone is just close enough to reality that the 'it was all a near-death dream' reveal plays as a genuine, perfect surprise.

7. 'Son of Coma Guy' (Season 3, Episode 7)

From a soapy premise – a long-term coma patient is woken up for just one day in order to save his dying son – comes the third season's most subtle and intense hour.

House and Wilson accompany Coma Guy (standout guest star John Larroquette) on a road trip to Atlantic City in order to pick up his favourite hoagie, but the light-hearted sandwich hunt rapidly descends into something much bleaker and more revealing for all three characters.

Writer Doris Egan always did great work with the House/Wilson friendship (she also wrote 'House vs God'), and here their mounting tension is woven elegantly into the patient's story, with Wilson at his wits' end after lying to the police to protect House.

8. '97 Seconds' (Season 4, Episode 3)

Between the 2007 writers' strike and the departure of House's original team, season four could easily have been a disaster, but the 16-episode run is actually one of the show's most consistent.

This underrated early highlight sees House become fixated on the afterlife after he witnesses the electrocution of a patient, who later claims that his near-death experience was "the best 97 seconds of his life". Never one for half measures, House sticks a knife into a plug socket to find out for himself.

The results are pensive and affecting in understated House fashion, and provide an early spotlight for Anne Dudek's Amber, who would become a key player later in the season. The wheelchair-bound patient of the week (Brian Klugman) is also memorable: his faithful companion dog whimpering at his bedside is guaranteed lump-in-throat stuff every time.

9. 'House's Head' / 'Wilson's Heart' (Season 4, Episodes 15 & 16)

Viewed as a two-parter, the season four finale rivals 'Three Stories' as the show's finest hour. As the episodes' titles imply, they're a perfect one-two punch, with the first boggling your mind just in time for the second to break your heart.

House emerges from a serious bus crash relatively unscathed, but unable to remember anything leading up to the accident. Convinced that one of his fellow passengers is missing and in mortal danger, he goes to characteristically insane lengths to shock his brain into recovering the memories, which leads to several visually-arresting sequences inside what we can only call House's 'mind bus'.

By the time he realises the victim is Amber – now Wilson's girlfriend – she's beyond saving, and her final moments are as gut-wrenching as it gets. Dudek was such a potent presence that Amber is a huge loss in herself, particularly since the strike meant we didn't even get a full season of her.

But it's the impact her death has on everyone around her that really stings – from Wilson, who's wrecked, to House, who's guilt-stricken, to Thirteen, who finally confronts her Huntington's diagnosis as a result. We will never be able to hear Iron & Wine's 'Passing Afternoon' without tearing up, thanks to this episode.

10. 'Birthmarks' (Season 5, Episode 4)

House and Wilson on the road together is always going to be good. House and Wilson on the road together after several episodes of estrangement? All the better.

Despite Wilson's attempt to sever ties with House in the wake of Amber's death, it was always clear he couldn't stay away for long. It's a joy to watch the pair snakily hash out their issues en route to House's father's funeral, in an episode that represents the show at its playful, tender best.

Aside from offering a rare glimpse into House's background, 'Birthmarks' also gives us the House/Wilson origin story, delving into the endlessly fertile question of just why the friendship works so well for them both.

11. 'Under My Skin' (Season 5, Episode 23)

Things get very dark towards the end of season five, beginning with the abrupt suicide of Kal Penn's seemingly carefree Kutner, and concluding several episodes later with House suffering a full psychotic break.

The latter arc stretches over five well-executed episodes, but 'Under My Skin' stands out as the intense pinnacle as House's hallucinations of Amber become more and more persistent and frightening – her rendition of 'Enjoy Yourself' still chills.

And since the House/Cuddy relationship was yet to be run into the ground, there's some actual thrill in watching things escalate between them here, albeit leading up to a reveal that recalls the reality-bending twist in 'No Reason'.

12. 'Broken' (Season 6, Episodes 1 & 2)

One thing House always did well was follow through on its season finale game changers – when House loses his team at the end of season three, there is no re-assembling in season four.

Similarly after season five ended with House checking into a psychiatric hospital, six doesn't begin with him being conveniently called back to Princeton for a mind-boggling case only he can solve, easy though that kind of status quo reset would have been.

Instead, the show takes a feature-length episode to actually explore what a redeemed, pill-free, self-aware House looks like, and how he functions as a leading man.

With no familiar supporting characters (save a brief appearance from Wilson) the focus is solely on Laurie's spectacular performance, and though the episode veers slightly into sentimentality, it's no bad thing after the unremittingly bleak fifth season.

13. 'The C-Word' (Season 8, Episode 19)

House lost its way for a while in its final seasons, but creator David Shore righted the ship just in time for the end by putting the focus firmly on the relationship that had always been the show's core.

One one level, giving Wilson terminal cancer is about the cruelest ending Shore could have written both for his hero and his fans, and coming after so much relentless suffering for House it might have felt like overkill.

But House being forced to take care of his best friend after eight seasons of the opposite turned out to be just the shot of emotional adrenalin the show needed in its final episodes, with Leonard and Laurie particularly devastating in 'The C-Word' as House nurses Wilson through a potentially deadly experimental treatment.

Honourable mentions:

'Babies & Bathwater' (Season 1, Episode 18), 'Autopsy' (Season 2, Episode 2), 'The Mistake' (Season 2, Episode 8), 'One Day, One Room' (Season 3, Episode 12), 'Frozen' (Season 4, Episode 11), 'The Social Contract' (Season 5, Episode 17), 'Wilson' (Season 6, Episode 10), 'The Dig' (Season 7, Episode 18), 'Nobody's Fault' (Season 8, Episode 11), 'Everybody Dies' (Season 8, Episode 22)

Which are your favourite episodes of House? Let us know in the comments!