What makes Showtime so great? Its series, like Weeds and Nurse Jackie.

It may say something about the times, or at least the proclivities of Showtime executives, but all these shows rely on the same twist: good people who do bad things and don’t express remorse.

Nurse Jackie premieres tonight on Showtime (as does the season premiere of Weeds.)

Jackie, played by Edie Falco (Carmela of the Sopranos) is a nurse with an addiction to painkillers.

Ms. Falco, who played Carmela on “The Sopranos,” is Jackie Peyton, a tough, brusque and dedicated nurse at All Saints, a fictional Roman Catholic hospital in Lower Manhattan. She knows more about emergency medicine than patronizing doctors do, and she isn’t afraid to speak up. Double shifts and 80-hour weeks have left her with a bad back, and that has led her to grind Percocet into her coffee sweetener and snort lines of Adderall in the ladies’ room.

I love the tagline accompanying the photo above on the show’s homepage: “Life is full of little pricks”