On what date did the medical drama House M.D. premiere in the United States?

House M.D. premiered in the United States on November 16, 2004. The series debuted on Fox and began its long run with the episode “Pilot,” introducing the unconventional diagnostician Gregory House and his team at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

The premiere established the show’s central formula: a patient presents with baffling symptoms, House proposes competing diagnoses, and the medical team uses tests, treatment trials, and deduction to identify the illness. The episode also introduced House’s dependence on Vicodin and his difficult relationship with hospital administrator Lisa Cuddy and oncologist James Wilson.

The program was created by David Shore and became one of Fox’s signature dramas. Although its cases were fictionalized and sometimes compressed for television, the series drew heavily on real medical terminology and diagnostic reasoning. The premiere date is sometimes confused with the start of a later season, but November 16, 2004, is the original U.S. broadcast date.