House, the new Sherlock Holmes?

I was watching Sherlock Holmes with Sarah the other day and we were discussing how eccentric Sherlock Holmes seemed. One thing lead to another and we came to remark on the similarities between Holmes and House (the doctor that diagnoses special complex cases). I hypothesized that House was based on Holmes. For one thing, they both are very good at solving mysteries through careful observations, and logic. They both have substance abuse problems. They are both musically gifted. They both have a sidekick, companion who tries to keep them out of too much trouble (Watson for Holmes, Wilson for House, W for H basically). They both an obsession with solving the problems that they ignore other people and are quite curt. The list goes on.
This made me think, are all good stories written. Is our generation content with rehashing old stories with a different packaging. I noticed this with good asian dramas and movies (Pocahontas vs Avatar, remakes of all movies: Clash of the Titans, A team, etc) too. Maybe the pool of "good" stories is very limited, and writers need to constantly re-think on ways to retell a good story, or embellish it. Maybe we just got lazy storytellers. Or maybe we as an audience cannot truly accept other stories and can only find comfort in common plot lines.