I'm working on a story for Sunday about a small surge in TV series about nurses -- after years of series like Grey's Anatomy and House, where nurses are little more than wallpaper, there are three shows coming in the next year featuring modern-day Florence Nightingales.

So far, the best of them is the show that likely sparked the trend: Sopranos alum Edie Falco's series for Showtime, Nurse Jackie.

Falco's Jackie is a defiantly working-class mother, wife and take-charge nurse who is also hiding a raging drug habit and personal life so conflicted, that no one in her life knows her full story.

It's easy to see why Falco fell for this role after years playing the upper-middle-class mob wife -- and not hard to imagine Hollywood deciding nurses are hot, once a heavyweight like Falco decided to play one.

My story on the trend will hit the newspaper later, but here's a peek at the pilot of Nurse Jackie, which Showtime has thoughtfully plopped on YouTube in hopes of getting you hooked on the series. I also think, after seeing six episodes, it's the best new series so far in 2009.

(WARNING: Explicit language and situations in the episode)

What do you think? *