Hugh Laurie stars as brilliant New Jersey medic Dr Gregory House in the fourth series of the Emmyand Golden Globe-winning medical drama. This week, House’s team is presented with the case of a Jewish bride who collapsed at her wedding. House suspects the woman’s recent religious conversion is evidence of mental illness, bringing him into conflict with her new husband. At the same time, he is keen to analyse Wilson’s relationship with Amber.

In the midst of a boisterous Jewish wedding, the bride collapses and breaks her leg, putting an end to the festivities. At the hospital, 38-year-old Roz is found to have blood in her urine and is presented to House’s team to diagnose. House wastes no time in sending Taub and Foreman to Roz’s apartment to search for clues. Although they find no immediate explanation for her illness, they report back with the surprising news that Roz used to live a rather different sort of life.

Questioned more closely, Roz admits that she was a heroin addict and rock-music producer before giving it all up to become a Hasidic Jew just six months ago. For House, this sudden conversion to a strict religious life is evidence of an altered mental state, not to mention a tendency towards masochism – although his team begs to differ. “She’s nuts,” Taub says, “but we can’t just give her 10ccs of atheism and send her home.”

Undeterred, House repeats his mantra that “people don’t change” and proposes that Roz has porphyria, a rare disease which could explain her abrupt mental switch. Unfortunately, word of House’s theory reaches Roz’s pious new husband, who takes offence at the notion that conversion to his religion is a sign of madness, and demands that House be removed from the case. “My wife’s body is sick. Her mind and soul are fine!” he says.

However, House is sent back to the drawing board when Roz develops breathing difficulties that would seem to rule out porphyria. Theorising that she has a heart problem, he orders her to do a stress test. Roz passes the test, only to collapse with pain in her leg, suggesting she has a blood clot. The doctors are then bemused to find that her blood pressure drops when she sits upright, causing her to keel over.

After ruling out other possibilities, House hits on the notion that Roz has a nerve disorder and orders her to undergo a ‘sweat test’. Roz is placed inside a heated chamber, but instead of sweating, her temperature plummets. “She was supposed to sweat and she froze,” House says. “Her body’s doing the opposite it’s supposed to.” Roz’s condition worsens still further when she is found to have internal bleeding that requires emergency surgery. However, she refuses to have the operation until nightfall, after she has observed a Jewish ritual with her husband. “She’s not a masochist – she’s suicidal!” is House’s incredulous response. Chase comes up with a novel solution to “speed up” nightfall – but time is running out for the team to discover exactly what is wrong with her...

Elsewhere this week, House is desperate to get to the bottom of Wilson and Amber’s relationship. He cannot shake the suspicion that Amber is using Wilson to get back in his “orbit”; nor can he fathom Wilson’s attraction to the doctor that he so memorably nicknamed ‘Cutthroat Bitch’. “She’s the anti-Wilson,” he says. “She’s a force for evil.” But as he observes them more closely, House detects what may be a newer, softer side to Amber. Is she defying his maxim that people never change?