House Returns Tonight!

House, my favorite new television show of last season, returns for its second year tonight.

English actor Hugh Laurie, long known in the U.S. for mainly playing dimwits on BritComs like A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Black Adder, Jeeves and Wooster, and The Young Ones, has been nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series for his role as the sarcastic but brilliant, limping, Vicodin-popping American Dr. Gregory House. This show is appointment viewing at its finest.

The Akron Beacon-Journal reports that tonight's premiere episode (9 p.m., Fox) "will have you asking if House is starting to soften up; he sure looks tidier as the season begins. Fortunately, he remains abrasive and skeptical.

"Tonight's main case involves a death-row inmate (LL Cool J) with a mysterious ailment, and House getting drunk to figure it out. (Really. And it's a good scene.) A second case finds Cameron (Jennifer Morrison) doubting a diagnosis.

"I wish they'd stop making Cameron such a wimp, and still think Sela Ward (as an old flame of House) is superfluous. And there's one hospital scene that's quite gross.

"But I keep watching, if only to enjoy Laurie's moves. And the episode coming on Sept. 20 is much better than tonight's."