TV Eye: Making improvements to the House

James Nesbitt shines on Monroe. Photo / Supplied

Hugh Laurie must be kicking himself. If only he'd waited a few more years, he might not have had to move to the US and put on an American accent to play a high-profile, troubled surgeon on a hit show.

If he'd just waited for the script for Monroe to come along he wouldn't have had to shift continents. He would've had a fight on his hands, though.

The show's star, James Nesbitt, plays the witty, sarcastic neurosurgeon in Prime's new medical drama (Tuesdays, 8.35pm) with a riveting authority, at times waltzing to his patients' bedsides like a weathered George Clooney on ER.

He's not quite as charming perhaps but he's nicer than House. And he gets better cases. Brain surgery is infinitely more entertaining than the slew of odd diseases Laurie deals with.

Monroe knows this, referring to the brain as the thing that stores our humanity, whereas the heart - dealt to by his nemesis, cardiac surgeon Jenny who appears not to have a particularly big one of her own - is "just a pump".

That's not to say the show lacks heart. Monroe might be cutting (ha ha), but he's a normal guy who loves his music, instructing his team of wannabe surgeons (including one who reminds him of himself, and therefore he doesn't like) to operate the playlist during his surgeries. In the first episode he showed an interest in the Arctic Monkeys, Stone Roses and Nick Cave. Not a bad start.

We also discovered that as his teenaged son left home, his wife was going to leave him too. And that his daughter had died on the operating table.

Monroe is apparently not the sort for wallowing in self-pity, (and neither are his overly quippy colleagues likely to indulge him) although he did cut a sad figure holding his plastic guitar in an empty home.

"You need to be strong," he told the husband of a patient, who was considering leaving his wife after her recovery from a brain op didn't go so well, "not some self-righteous whinge-bag".

There was a bit of bloody brain gore, but thankfully not too much - we got to see a patient, still conscious, having her grey matter probed while she was asked questions to test her coherence.

It's probably how some viewers felt trying to keep up with Nesbitt's Northern Irish vowels, delivered like a grumbling freight train while he power-walked the hospital corridors, the camera angles continually changing as they chased him.

So far, so familiar. The tone, the pace, the script, even the core idea for this show - appears to have come from the likes of House. Do we really need another medical drama?

Well possibly, because this one appears to trump the others, and maybe that's because medical jargon sounds brainier when spoken by Europeans in their own accents. Nor is it lit as though it's all taking place in a day-glo, happy place (a la Grey's Anatomy).

It feels as though there could be room for some decent character exploration, given Monroe has only just had his family walk out on him, and his daily routine involves such high stakes as preserving people's lives, personalities and memories.

He's so much more likeable than House, which is both a good and a bad thing - who doesn't love a TV curmudgeon? - and with just as pithy conversation skills: "I only did what anyone would do with a medical degree and a borderline personality disorder."

But you can't help but feel it's a shame Monroe is so similar to House - with such writing and acting talent, surely an original idea could have been spawned from somewhere within the creators' cerebral cortexes?

- TimeOut