House M.D. was primarily inspired by which literary detective?

House M.D. was primarily inspired by Sherlock Holmes.

Gregory House is deliberately modeled on Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective Sherlock Holmes. Both characters rely on observation, deduction, and unusual evidence to solve problems that leave others confused. House’s surname also echoes Holmes’s name, and Dr. James Wilson parallels Holmes’s friend and chronicler, Dr. John Watson.

The parallels extend beyond character names. House lives at 221B Baker Street, the famous London address associated with Holmes, and he plays the piano and guitar, while Holmes is known for playing the violin. House also uses Vicodin, creating a modern counterpart to Holmes’s drug use in the original stories.

The medical cases replace traditional murder mysteries: symptoms are clues, diagnoses are solutions, and the hospital team functions like investigators. House is not a direct adaptation of one Holmes story, but the series uses the detective’s structure and personality as its foundation.