House M.D. - Expertly Entertaining

As a writer, I appreciate House on a few different levels.

1. House is a modern analog of Sherlock Holmes (Holmes...Homes...House...get it?).  They're both drug addicts, super sleuths, manipulative, and anti-social.  They also both have best friends who are physicians and who wear their heart on their sleeves (Watson and Wilson), who were once married, but lost their wives.
2. The story arcs are good and the dialogue is great.
3. Each episode is composed of 3-4 story arcs.  That is, there is an A (primary) story and a B (secondary) story for the characters.  Then there's the mystery of the illness they're dealing with.  Every once in a great while it's pretty straightforward, but being the series is in the mystery genre and treats the illnesses as characters, there are sometimes A and B stories for the illness itself.  All of this is woven together quite expertly.