It’s a classic fairy tale with a twist. A British actor toils in the fields of television comedy for years, specialising in upper-class twits, but is outshone by his brighter chums. Then he stars in an American series that becomes a massive hit — and is unhappy ever after.

Last week British terrestrial viewers had their first chance to see Hugh Laurie in the imported Fox medical drama House, giving a mesmerising performance as a cantankerous doctor that has won 18m American viewers and bowled over US critics. The Seattle Times summed up the plaudits by giving “three reasons to watch the show: “Hugh Laurie, Hugh Laurie and Hugh Laurie”.

Best known to British audiences as the hapless Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry’s Jeeves and as Blackadder’s gormless Prince Regent, the gangly and goggle-eyed Old Etonian recently won an American poll as the sexiest doctor on television. But, being Laurie, he’s not happy. “How bizarre,” he lamented.

No doubt he will look askance at the British reviews of House. “One of the most enjoyable bits of television I’ve watched in a long time,” pronounced The Times. “If he recited the Hippocratic oath every week, in the original Greek, people would watch him. Me included,” said the Daily Mail’s man. Even our own AA Gill calls him a “welcome poppet”.

Laurie’s new incarnation owes something to Dr Jekyll and the sitcom shrink Frasier — in that he seems a more suitable case for treatment than his patients. But his moody, graceless doctor, dragging his gammy leg and gulping down painkillers, calls to mind someone else. The giveaway clue is his name: Dr Gregory House. Substitute Holmes for House and a medical Sherlock Holmes is revealed.

The production team in Los Angeles are acutely aware they are dealing with a brooding genius with a highly developed penchant for misanthropy. Katie Jacobs, the executive producer of House, told an interviewer last month: “Every day at about four or five o’clock, Hugh’s sitting on the kerb completely despondent. He’s miserable no matter what he does. Never thinks he’s good enough, never thinks he’s got it right.”

The actor, who turned 46 yesterday, is aware that his self-criticism is extreme, but he cannot restrain it. “It’s true of all of my life,” he said recently. “I wish I could silence that part of my brain. Or remove it.”

His discontent is increased by the distance between Los Angeles, which resembles “a giant petrol station” to his eye, and his family in London: Jo Green, his wife of 16 years, and their children, Charlie, Bill and Rebecca. He worked out that even if they all went to America to stay with him, they would only see him for an hour or so a week, so merciless is his shooting schedule.

Conscious that Laurie does such a good job of self-deprecation that people tend to take him at his word, his friends often rally round to point out that in reality he is funny, charming and good company. Emma Thompson, who dated him briefly, said memorably: “He is one of those rare people who managed to be lugubriously sexy, like a well-hung eel.”

The polymathic Fry, his best friend and long-time collaborator, has insisted that his own renowned intellect is positively gnatlike compared to Laurie’s. “He’s better at everything than I am.”

Laurie has many hidden talents. A guitarist and keyboard player who appears with the band Poor White Trash, he once rowed for England, is writing his second novel, collects motorbikes and has recently taken up boxing.

He recognised his pessimism as clinical depression in 1996 and sought help from a psychotherapist. “I was in the middle of a stockcar race for charity, with cars exploding and turning over when it suddenly hit me: I was bored. I thought this can’t be right. I diagnosed myself and decided I would try to sort it out.”

The dark cloud of hopelessness and guilt stemmed, inevitably, from his childhood. He was born on June 11, 1959 in Oxford, where his Scots father, Ranold, was a GP. The youngest of four children, he was brought up with the strict values of his mother, Patricia, with whom he had a troubled relationship.