Doctor, I'm feeling fungible (whatever that means)

Iain Millar

The Independent on Sunday
05-01-2005

Isn't it always the way. You wait forever for someone to say 'fungible' in an imported US TV drama on a satellite channel and then it goes and happens twice in one week.

Fungible one ('The definition of urgent is fungible') was in House, on Hallmark, starring Hugh Laurie as an irascible American infectious-diseases doctor with a fine line in withering sarcasm. Yes that Hugh Laurie. Blackadder. Bertie Wooster. Twit.
Actually, he's actually got a bit more than that on his CV. Like Lord Monty in The Young Ones or roles in the execrable Peter's Friends or Spice World. Or the father of a talking mouse in Stuart Little. It's not that he wasn't a good twit " he was the twit's twit if ever there was one. But for all his abilities (he is also said to have written a passable novel), twit was how he was going to be forever etched into the collective memory. But not now.

Now he's snarling out lines such as 'treating patients is what makes most doctors miserable', dodging his duties as a general clinician and telling a highly qualified black neurologist that he only hired him because he was street smart (and all done with a more than acceptable American accent and a large dose of gammy-legged attitude).

Episode one, shown last week, had a loveable teacher heading quickly down the tubes until House's team discovered a dying tape- worm doing unspeakable things to her brain. This week saw an athletic teenager develop night terrors and auditory hallucinations, leading to hypotheses of sexual abuse and multiple sclerosis, before a final diagnosis of subacute-sclerosing panencephalitis " that's potentially fatal dormant infant measles to you and me. (ER groupies should make the transition painlessly as there's plenty of grisly, close-up procedure and obscure medical terminology like this.) Next week, Lorraine Kelly guest stars as a death-row serial killer who sinks into a coma after developing an allergy to her cellmate. Which is about as likely as William Shatner winning an Emmy award for best actor. Except that he did. Which leads us to...

Fungible two ('Everybody is fungible'), which was said by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Constable Odo (Rene Auberjonois) to Star Trek: The Original Series's Captain Kirk (Shatner) on Boston Legal, (Living) the new show from Ally McBeal-creator David E Kelley. Boston Legal is just a limp McBeal reworking (including the same wacky, wobbly camera shots of Boston buildings), combined with a bit of LA Law. Quite what a respectable brace of actors like James Spader and Philip Baker Hall are doing here is baffling " and Shatner, loveable old rou that he is, is hammier than a double- strength pig pie. 'Don't waste your time trying to get in my head. There's nothing there,' he said. Can't argue with that.

Finally, maybe it's Mark Thompson's experience at Channel 4 with Friends and all the rest. Or maybe it's new BBC2 chief Roly Keating " who first brought Larry David's sublime Curb Your Enthusiasm to our screens during his time at BBC4. But next week, BBC2 starts showing Australia's finest TV export (and I don't mean the Wiggle Brothers, no matter how rich they are), the raucous comedy Kath and Kim, first raved about here some 18 months ago when it was showing on Living and its Freeview cousin Ftn. If they keep this up, non- digital viewers might get a glimpse of House in about 2008. (By the way, meant to tell you, fungible means... sorry, out of space. Best look it up.)

(Copyright 2005 Independent Newspapers (UK) Limited)

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