Sometimes even that is not enough to get her back on her feet. Peter Facinelli plays Fitch Cooper, a callow doctor with a Tom Cruise breeziness and a rare nervous disorder, and he too is at times forced over the edge of caricature.
Jackie has an unlikely best friend on the hospital staff, the glamorous, callous Dr. The first episode is the most forced, and it takes a while for the series to reach a surer stride. The sixth episode, with Judith Ivey guest-starring as a nurse with cancer who returns to All Saints to die, is worth the wait. Too many early scenes that are supposed to be taut and acidly funny are instead blowsy and overblown; humor is a delicate instrument, and here it is pasted on too roughly, like a campaign poster hurriedly slapped onto a street sign.
Jackie is not Carmela, but Ms. Jackie has a very dry and mitigating sense of humor, but her righteous streak steers the story. Hospital shows are almost always watchable; deadly diseases and flat-lining patients have a way of enlivening the most formulaic scripts, and some of these story lines are well wrought.
There are other compensations, notably the delicious newcomer Merritt Wever as Zoey, an insecure, clumsy student nurse who trips, tiptoes and sashays around Jackie with a strange, stop-and-start servility. Showtime, Monday nights at , Eastern and Pacific times; , Central time. Brixius and Ms. Wallem; Ms. Wallem, Ms.
Cady, associate producers; Ms. Cady, technical consultant. Produced by Showtime and Lionsgate. Television Wearing a Scowl and a Stethoscope. Showtime is the network of the guilt-free secret.
