Doctor, the critics will see you now: we’re still diagnosing House – 14 years on

Freelance journalist Janet Murray decided to start watching the television drama House, starring Hugh Laurie. It didn’t go well. She posted on X that House had the “same narrative every episode”, and completed her putdown with an incredulous: “Eight seasons of this?” Of course, social media is crammed with such throwaway negativity. But things tend to escalate when the high-profile recipient of the criticism decides to join the instigator in Sneersville.

Laurie responded to Murray’s post in character – spikily correcting her punctuation, and saying he looked forward to her first novel – intent on dismantling her “same narrative every episode” swipe. Her post did seem to suggest that she was a stranger to the joys of the profoundly formulaic: the pleasure of watching, week after week, the same story, told in an only slightly different way. An obvious example of this repetitive trope is, of course, marriage, but it’s also common in television. I’ve no idea how old Silas could afford that Abba Voyage-level 3D projection equipment on a janitor’s wages, but I still love watching Scooby-Doo and the gang prove he was responsible for the haunted ice rink. My favourite ever group, the Fall – described by John Peel as “always different, always the same” – had a song that celebrated their love of the three Rs: “repetition, repetition, repetition”. Laurie offered up Bach’s variations on the same chord sequence and Frida Kahlo’s numerous self-portraits as examples of the phenomenon. Not sure he ever watched Scooby-Doo.

Though it’s often seen as classy to stoically endure journalistic criticism, I’ve always been impressed by those victims who answer back. The royal family were famed for taking the dignified-silence option, but I was thrilled when, after years of stories about incarcerated aunties and long-term affairs, the royal bite-back finally came when Princess Diana was accused, after being photographed leaving a fitness club in shorts, of having cellulite. She immediately leaked to the press that she’d been sitting on a patterned stool. I miss her.

The odd thing about all this is that House finished 14 years ago. It used to be that the first episode of a TV series would get reviewed, for good or bad, and then the critics basically moved on to the next new thing. You might get a line or two, if it came back for a second series, but generally that was it. They left you alone. There was no archive of old shows, unless you bought them on VHS or DVD, and viewers moaned if there were too many repeats. TV, then, was written in the sand and quickly washed away by the tide. But now catch-up, on-demand and the big streaming services have fortified that sand and water with cement.

I can remember days when I went out thinking everyone was staring at me with contempt because they’d read my bad review in that morning’s newspaper. Luckily, the anguish faded after a few days. Now, the work is immortalised – as are bad reviews – and Laurie’s series gets slammed, out of the blue, though it was all done and dusted before the London Olympics.

Criticism generally comes too late. I wrote a play a few years back. The morning after the opening night, I bought every newspaper to read the theatre critics. I got five stars; unfortunately, they were spread across four separate reviews. If you think I’m making this up for comic purposes, you can, of course, still read them all on the bloody internet. I searched social media for more hate, and I found it in abundance. I admit, it was a truly terrible play, but most of the criticism was pathetic. There were, however, three reviews that were excellent: brutally honest but also incisive and illuminating. I remember thinking that if only I’d read those reviews before I wrote the play, it would have been so much better. Thankfully, no one ever reviewed my understanding of chronology.

Murray was clearly surprised to hear from Laurie. She archly acknowledged the patronising tone of his response but added a laughing emoji. That should have been it – but, inevitably, she was “seriously trolled”, and Laurie soon apologised for his response, I think largely in an attempt to quell the haters. After all that unpleasantness, Murray told the actor she actually liked the show “despite its repetition”, and liked him in it. Feuds aren’t what they used to be. The 18th-century poet Alexander Pope systematically compiled six scrapbooks of bad stuff that had been written about him and used it as a hit list whenever he fancied writing some completely merciless revenge poems. Consequently, when he went out, he would take two pistols and a Great Dane, ready for anyone who hadn’t reached the laughing-emoji level of forgiveness.]

Photograph by Fox