The margin was just 30,000, but it's a start.

The prior week, "House" was the top-rated drama on television, beating even ABC's "Desperate Housewives" to take third place behind "Idol's" performance and results shows.

Unsurprisingly, Fox has picked up the show for a third season.

Laurie's Gregory House, M.D., is often nastier than even Cowell - he's a grumpy, slightly crippled and thingyy prodigy who is consistently sarcastic, rude, insulting and practically intolerable.

The role won Laurie a Golden Globe for best actor in a television drama earlier this year.

Although Laurie is an Englishman who still lives in the U.K. with his wife and three children, his American accent is so flawless that it's unlikely the average viewer has any inkling of his nationality - or that even though the show shoots in L.A., he has never relocated.

A household name in Britain, Laurie, 46, chummed around with Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson at Cambridge and starred with Fry in the well-loved BBC comedy "Wooster and Jeeves."