House and Holmes

There's been some commentary about the formulaic nature of the House television show.

I'm reasonably certain (and this is backed up by a comment made by the creator of House, MD) that the House and Wilson relationship is based on the Holmes/Watson relationship from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.

Those stories were extremely formulaic, and there's a great deal of literary speculation that Conan Doyle didn't care too much about the plots of his mysteries. The formulaic nature of the stories was (theoretically) meant to highlight the nuances of the character development, and to takethe distracting nature of the plot away so that more focus could be placed on the characters.

House and Wilson are similarly situated...and television serials are perfect for that.