House: Five, 9pm
Heroes: BBC2, 9pm

IT was a mighty risky plotline: would House pull it off? To recap: House is a glossy-looking and unspeakably preposterous TV melodrama set in an unbelievably all-action New Jersey hospital, Princeton-Plainsboro.

It stars a deft British actor, Hugh Laurie, as PP's maverick medic hero Greg House, self-confessed "nutjob head of diagnostic medicine." House limps! House ponders, uttering muscular words of woolly cod-philosophy! House sticks his germ-battling expertise where lesser doctors fear to probe! House challenges accepted medical wisdom in a zanily freebooting manner! House saves a life from incredibly rare microbial onslaught!

In last night's ultra-nutsoid episode, House disguised himself as a chauffeur, obtained a limo and hung about outside a TV studio. He then kidnapped the thespian lead - get this! - of an unspeakably preposterous TV melodrama set in an unbelievable hospital. This fictional medical melodrama within a fictional medical melodrama was a daytime soap. Its star, Dr Brock Sterling, was played by a fictional actor called Evan Greer.

Get even more of this! Evan Greer repeatedly decried his silly medical TV show as ridiculous rubbish! Gasp! The possibilities for a deadly cross-infection of the self-knowledge bacillus were legion. Would House contract a fatal myohmytheirony infarction? Surely Hugh Laurie would suddenly break free of his role's multiple constrictions and stop growling in the catarrhal American tones of Greg House? Wouldn't the much-loved Laurie, in his genuine English voice, admit he was sick and tired of sleep-hirpling his way through House via intensely mannered bits of deft micro-acting, all acute little facial gibbers and two-second nasal twitches?

No, he wouldn't. And so House ground on, somehow growing more compelling for Hugh Laurie's restraint.

(In addition, a burgeoning amour between House's socially inept underlings, Amber and Wilson, played out involvingly via the purchase of a bed.) House's bid to save his patient's life grew in urgency, ranging across occipital tumour, myxodoema, impotence, toxic sunflower seeds and deadly chrysanthemums, plasmaferesis, auto-immune conditions and methylprednisolone before settling on an allergy to the active ingredient in tonic water. "Kwy-nine!" shouted Laurie in House's American accent, bravely stifling what must have been a mighty urge to pronounce quinine properly, in the British manner.

Best of all, though, House wound up making you think, and left you with a couple of questions. For Greg House's involvement in the case of the Crumpling Soap Doctor Actor came about only because he'd noticed the chap slow up on screen. He paused more often between lines. Had trouble reading the teleprompter. Held his stethoscope a bit funny. Two questions are thus inevitable: if Scots GPs have ever amused themselves by diagnosing a condition by watching an actor display its symptoms on TV, would you be at all surprised? And do you think that even one GP has ever made extra work for themselves by acting upon their tele-diagnosis? House: it's an odd neighbourhood.

Since I last watched Heroes, which admittedly was long ago, the show has bravely chosen to eschew all narrative logic. Every character in Heroes is a superhero. That's when they're not being a supervillain. Or when they're not being both supergoodie and superbaddie at the same time. Everyone in Heroes can and will be killed and then come back to life. As a result, no rational viewer can develop any emotional attachment whatsoever to any of them. Heroes: it's beyond cure, terminally ill.