BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Fox's "House" (9 p.m. Tuesday) premiered last year to low ratings but got a big boost from having "American Idol" as its lead-in early this year. Now, "House" is a bona fide hit.

		'House' When: 9 p.m. Tuesday on Fox. Starring: Hugh Laurie.

In January, "House" moves to 8 p.m. Monday and will air without the benefit of "Idol." Executive producer David Shore acknowledged "Idol" helped, but now that viewers are used to watching, he thinks they'll follow the show to its new time slot.

"The reruns have done better than those first few episodes did," Shore said. "So I'm really not that worried about it because the numbers have stayed up."

Reruns continue to air this summer, and "House" will have its second season premiere Sept. 13.

A concern among critics last summer -- me included -- was that star Hugh Laurie had an amazing presence as the ill-behaved Dr. Gregory House, but the show didn't feel like a Fox series. It felt more ... well, CBS-like with its procedural elements. We were wrong.

"I do think there is a 15-year-old boy in that character, but with the power of an adult," Shore said, explaining its appeal to younger viewers.

In addition, while "House" remains a procedural drama at heart, more serialized elements crept in last season, including an arc with Chi McBride as a hospital board member. Sela Ward returns for seven episodes this fall as House's former love, but that doesn't mean that House and Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) might not someday turn their bickering into romance.

"We're not closing any doors," Shore said, emphasizing that while the series will continue to explore the personal lives of the characters, at heart it remains a procedural drama. "What we've found is everybody's so fallen in love with these characters that we have to explore it, but we cannot simply throw out the essence of the show, which is the procedural element."

Shore said he was aiming for a Sherlock Holmes-Watson relationship between House and Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), although Leonard described it as "Tigger and Pooh" before correcting himself and comparing House to Eeyore.

"My character is the only one on the show who doesn't have power over House and whom House doesn't have power over," Leonard said, more seriously. "I'm really the only one he can be himself with. ? For an actor, that opens a lot of great possibilities for scenes and character development."

When it comes to medical stories, Shore said the show's writers/producers began with a bank of out-of-the-ordinary medical stories, but that well started to dry up last Christmas. Plenty more have arisen since then.

"I've been shocked how they've been coming, how we're finding more and more unusual stories and unusual things happen to people," he said. "We've got a lot of doctors helping us. We've got doctors who are consultants and they keep coming up with ideas and our writers keep reading books and articles and coming up with stuff."

Laurie, who is British and known for starring in the Britcoms "Jeeves and Wooster" and "Blackadder," said the most difficult aspect of playing a character with a limp who uses a cane isn't remembering to limp, but moving through scenes with only one free hand.

"To drink a cup of tea and put two sugars in and open a door and answer a telephone becomes incredibly time-consuming," Laurie said. "Every scene for me is about, where am I going to park the cane? When I pick this up, where am I going to put the cane? That's a physical constraint."

He said his father was a doctor and he was raised with a natural respect for doctors and medical knowledge, but Laurie is also a quick wit who didn't hesitate to respond when asked if, as a patient, he'd put up with the abuse House dishes out to his patients.

"Yes, I love abuse," he said, joking. "I really do. But I've got a private arrangement with someone. You needn't know about that."