There’s a cute moment in episode six of House, Five’s new medical import from America. The hero, Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie (pretending to be a gruff American), wants to telephone another doctor in the middle of the night, so he pretends to be an upper-class English consultant ringing from London, unaware of the time difference. As a Brit pretending to be an American pretending to be a Brit, he gets the English accent rather well. In fact, he sounds uncannily like Bertie Wooster or the Prince Regent in Blackadder the Third.

We can presume Laurie gets the American accent well, too, because the series has been a big success over there. Having Brits play Americans is relatively new in television (there’s also Joely Richardson in Nip/Tuck and Ian McShane in Deadwood), whereas the film industry sometimes looks like a gigantic transatlantic exchange programme. Kenneth Branagh, Bob Hoskins, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslet, Daniel Day-Lewis, Kate Beckinsale, Jude Law and now Clive Owen — the list of Brits who have turned American is endless.

In the other direction, Reese Witherspoon, Renée Zellwegger, Johnny Depp and Gwyneth Paltrow have all had a pop at being English. The difference is that, while the British are heading for the big bucks, for the Americans it often seems a bit of fun. The sad truth is that House belongs to a category of intelligent, mainstream drama that barely exists here. And if Laurie hadn’t “gone native”, he might never have landed such a juicy role.

House, Five, Thursday, 10pm

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