As an occasional TV viewer, far be it from me to question the apparently immense popularity of Fox Network's 24, though how anyone can take Kiefer Sutherland's arboreal acting style seriously does perplex me. The network in question makes it up to me with its well-written medical series House, featuring Hugh Laurie (the father in Stuart Little) as Dr. House, the iconoclastic, antisocial, Percocet-addicted, brilliant diagnostician, both curing mysteriously afflicted patients and offending everyone who comes his way.