Series just what the doctor ordered for Falco

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This article was published 04/06/2009 (6324 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Coming soon to a TV near you: The woman who played Carmela Soprano in The Sopranos has cut her hair short and is about to play an emergency-room nurse.

And not just any nurse. In Nurse Jackie, Edie Falco plays a pill-popping, adulterous caregiver with both a vindictive streak and an empathetic, caring side.

Nurse Jackie, Showtime’s new comedic-drama featuring Falco as a loose-living, tough-as-nails ER nurse with a strict personal code, defies easy categorization.

And that’s exactly what Falco was looking for after six years of playing Carmela on The Sopranos.

Falco earned three Emmys and five Screen Actors Guild Awards during her time on the HBO show.

The last thing Falco wanted, though, was to play another wife.

Nurse Jackie, with its flawed heroine and complex take on personal and professional responsibility, was just what the doctor ordered. Falco’s nurse Jackie flushes an annoying patient’s ear down the toilet, all the while crunching Percocet tablets as if they were candy.

"The funniest thing in the world is my Aunt Carmela is a nurse," Falco said in Los Angeles earlier this year. "I just realized that the other day. It’s crazy."

Falco believes the key to her character, Jackie Peyton is that she’s cynical about the people she works with but patient and kind to the people who need her help.

Nurse Jackie is about empathy. It isn’t a comedy, like Scrubs. It isn’t a soap, like Grey’s Anatomy. It’s not a Sherlock Holmesian mystery, like House. It isn’t a front-lines ensemble drama like ER.

As the name suggests, Nurse Jackie focuses on the nurses, not the doctors. As Falco’s character says in the series’ second episode, "Doctor’s don’t heal, they diagnose. We heal." Nurse Jackie suffers from chronic back pain, owing to her long hours on the job — which is partly the reason for her addiction to painkillers.

Backlash? Falco isn’t worried. Carmela Soprano wasn’t exactly a role model.

"Any more backlash than there was from doing a Mob show for Italians, are you kidding me?" she says, laughing. "I never have an idea how people will react. People’s reactions to shows are as individual as the people doing the reacting. I have no idea what to expect. I’m not even remotely concerned, to be honest."

Nurse Jackie premieres Monday on Movie Central at 9 p.m.

— Canwest News Service

 

3 to see today

Elvis Costello, whose engaging, vibrant talk show Spectacle is fast becoming a reason to stay in on Friday nights, is David Letterman’s guest tonight on Late Show. Costello and Letterman may have the entire show to themselves — Paul Shaffer aside — as no other guests were scheduled at press time (CBS, 10:35).

Anything Jay Leno can do, Jimmy Kimmel can do better: That seems to be the raison d’etre behind tonight’s first-of-four half-hour prime-time specials called Jimmy Kimmel Live: Game Night. Kimmel is slated to chat with Denzel Washington, Jack Black, Will Ferrell and Brampton, Ont. native Michael Cera, among others. Programming note: The Kimmel specials are scheduled to air prior to the NBA Finals in the Central time zone. If the best-of-seven NBA finals go longer than four games, Kimmel will add more specials as necessary (Citytv, ABC, 7 p.m.).

The Beast, a wildly uneven contemporary drama starring Patrick Swayze as a wild ‘n’ woolly undercover FBI operative who takes on a wet-behind-the-ears rookie partner (Travis Fimmel), makes its Canadian network debut tonight, on E!. It previously aired on A&E. As summer TV dramas go, this is one of the better ones (E!, 9 p.m.).