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Diagnosis
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'Diagnosis' on Netflix: Where Are the Patients Now?
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Netflix's 'Diagnosis' Has a Major 'House' Connection
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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Diagnosis' On Netflix, Where Mystery Illnesses Are Crowdsourced To New York Times Readers
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What Is 'Diagnosis'? Everything You Need to Know About Netflix's Take on the New York Times Column
It’s not often that a newspaper column inspires a TV show, but that’s just what happened with Netflix’s new medical docu-series Diagnosis. The series, now streaming, is based on Dr. Lisa Sanders’ highly popular New York Times column by the same name. Each episode of Diagnosis the show follows Dr. Sanders as she writes about a patient with a mysterious illness in Diagnosis the column. From there, she and the episode’s subject field theories and potential diagnoses from all around the world as they start a quest to find treatment (and hopefully a cure).
But if you think it’s rare for a column to inspire one TV show, then it’s gotta be even rarer for one to inspire two. Diagnosis has done just that, because Diagnosis is the second TV series inspired by Diagnosis! The other show? House!
As Dr. Sanders casually mentions in the very first episode of Diagnosis, her column served as the inspiration for the show House–and she even worked as a medical consultant on the series. So in addition to having a column in the New York Times for 17 years and counting, Sanders also worked on the long-running Fox show House.
The connection actually comes from House executive producer Paul Attanasio. The screenwriter, an Academy Award nominee for Quiz Show and Donnie Brasco, co-created House with David Shore (NYPD Blue). Attanasio was actually inspired to work on a medical show because of Diagnosis, and when paired with Shore’s desire to adapt Sherlock Holmes, you get House.
As Sanders told Yale News in 2009, her involvement in the show was mostly via email, with writers asking her questions about what kinds of rare illnesses could could pop up in certain plots.
Now that House is over (the show wrapped in 2012), Sanders finds herself the star of her own Netflix series where she plays a much more friendly, patient-focused Dr. House–okay, so nothing like House at all, aside from their shared mission of getting the right diagnosis. And unlike House, Sanders turns to the internet to help crowdsource a diagnosis, something it’s hard to imagine House himself ever doing. House on the internet–probably wouldn’t be pretty!
