The annuls of television drama have rarely known as odd a duck as Dr. Gregory House and this collection of Season Four episodes is a perfect example of why the show has become a runaway hit for Fox and made an international superstar out of the actor in the title role, Hugh Laurie.

Although Laurie is best-known in the US for his role on House, in Great Britain he would have struggled to get cast in a similar drama due to an early career as an extremely silly comic actor, whose roles ranged from supporting bits on Rowan Atkinson’s Black Adder series, all the way to a sketch comedy show with Stephen Fry, known as “A Bit of Fry and Laurie.”

His transition to drama, however, has been nearly seamless. Using his British wit to make Dr. House seem cruel and dispassionate, Laurie has made the role uniquely his own and garnered quite a bit of acclaim in the process of playing a curmudgeon. He has worked hard behind the scenes against any efforts to soften his character up, preferring to play House in the bitter, asinine mode that the role was originally conceived in.

Season four, like all shows last season, was shortened by the writer’s strike (and perhaps some troubles with light fixtures), cut off at a mere sixteen episodes. Yet despite losing six episodes from their typical twenty-two episode season, it turned into one of the series’ most memorable.

Unlike most shows, who stay with the same core cast members throughout its entire run to the maximum extent possible despite taking place in a supposed “teaching” environment (how old were the sweathogs on Welcome Back, Kotter again?) House last season struck out in a bold direction by graduating its three main residents under Dr. House’s tutelage and forcing House into selecting a new group of understudies.

Of course, House maximizes the cruelty of the selection process, as well as our entertainment value, but putting the prospective interns through a reality-show style series of challenges. As the numbers dwindle over the course of the first ten episodes or so, the stars who possess the best chemistry with Laurie on screen eventually emerge, leading to the casting of Kal Penn, Peter Jacobson and Olivia Wilde as the newest recruits.

Of course, the original cast members were kept on, but their episode appearances have been cut back, beginning with this season and continuing into the current season five airing on Fox right now. This changing of the guard was a risk for a hit show, but was pulled off craftily enough to inject a sense of freshness into the drama, rather than making it feel like the show was gutted.

And the casting call stunt led to story possibilities even for some who didn’t make the final cut, setting up – in a strike-shortened year, mind you –the most affecting season finales of the show’s four-year run. All sixteen episodes, of course, are here in the collection, as over a half-dozen special feature documentaries and a commentary track on the season’s penultimate episode, House’s Head.

In all, any fan of the series will find this collection a must-have and it may be a season that helps hook new fans into the show, since the new cast of residents provide three new touchstones within the show.