DVDs in Review

Nurse Jackie Season One

Title: Nurse Jackie Season One (2009)

Release date: March 1 2010

Certificate: 15

Format: DVD

DVD RRP: £24.99

Rating: 4/5

When an actor becomes so well known for one TV role, it's often very hard to transfer to another and create a fresh onscreen persona that audiences can still yearn to engage with every week.

Edie Falco, who was simply brilliant as the feisty mobster's wife Carmela Soprano in the equally brilliant crime drama series 'The Sopranos' could've been one of these causalities, but her new show 'Nurse Jackie' proves, even in the first episode, that she has plenty more left to offer.

Falco smoulders, scene steals and adds seedy confidence to her role as nurse Jackie Peyton who struggles with an addiction to drugs as the flawed hospital struggles to cope all around her. She's also having an affair, raising kids and showing the doctors how to do their jobs.

Few characters in TV history as strong and damaged at the same time. With 'Nurse Jackie' you can expect the violent hospital judders of a show like 'ER' but injected with the jet black humour of 'MASH', only much more explicit.

Because it's far from subtle, it may distance more respectable viewers but for anyone looking to escape into some adult entertainment that doesn't involve car chases, 'Nurse Jackie' has enough interestingly drawn characters to see it rise above its own admitted smuttiness.

Like the sight of blood in hospitals, 'Nurse Jackie' is an acquired taste. Falco's triumphant return to leading lady status could very well get you hooked.