Edie Falco returns to episodic television in “Nurse Jackie” (9:30 p.m., Showtime). As she did with Carmella Soprano, Falco completely owns her character, a deeply empathetic and overworked nurse whose saintly facade covers up a few personal quirks. Jackie manages her back pain with a variety of prescription drugs that she scores from Eddie Walker (Paul Schulze), with whom she is having a torrid affair.

Well aware of her contradictions, Jackie muses on a variation of the words of St. Augustine: “Make me good, Lord, but just not yet.”

The notion of a beleaguered blue-collar nurse spouting St. Augustine, and in an earlier scene, T.S. Eliot, could be considered efforts to give a rich character even more hidden depths. Or it could be blamed on a screenwriter run amok suffering from a terminal case of the cutes.

Too often, as in the lines from T.S. Eliot, or the use of the theme to “Valley of the Dolls” (pills — get it?) or the repairing of Falco with Schulze, who played Father Phil on “The Sopranos,” all seems more clever than believable. Not to pull out of a fancy quote of my own, but didn’t they say, “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever” in “Spinal Tap”?

Happily, Falco’s performance rises above much of the nonsense.

• A compelling and peculiar little film, “God’s Cartoonist: The Comic Crusade of Jack Chick” (8 p.m., Documentary Channel) explores the shadowy story of the man behind more than a billion free religious tracts distributed on college campuses, park benches, laundry facilities and gathering places all over the world.

Despite the fact that only two photos of Jack Chick seem to exist, the film is filled with colorful characters, including several of Chick’s co-writers, an illustrator and a rogue gallery of underground artists and pop-cult weisenheimers. Despite serious misgivings about a message that at least one expert considers to be “hate speech,” they hold Chick in considerable awe.

The film’s authority would have been enhanced by some voices beyond the world of comic books or fringe evangelism. Seen from the perspective of history, Chick’s dire take on damnation would not be out of place in medieval morality plays. Nor would his vicious anti-Catholicism seem odd to John Milton, the acclaimed 17th-century poet and author of “Paradise Lost.”

Despite a few subpar attempts to animate Chick’s efforts, you have to admire this film, and to a certain extent, its subject. Decades before Twitter or the Internet, Chick shunned publicity and decided to offer his singular take on life, death and eternity — one palm-sized comic book at a time.

Returning cable series

• “The Closer” (8 p.m., TNT) enters its fifth season.

• The legal drama “Raising the Bar” (9 p.m., TNT) enters season two.

• “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List” (9 p.m., Bravo) enters its fifth season.

• “Weeds” (9 p.m., Showtime) enters its fifth season.

Tonight’s other highlights

• Radical weight loss on “House” (7 p.m., Fox).

• A con-man muddles the evidence on “Bones” (8 p.m., Fox).

Cult choice

Director Todd Haynes pays tribute to the lurid melodramas of the 1950s with the 2002 film “Far From Heaven” (8:45 p.m., IFC), starring Julianne Moore.

Late Night

Gretchen Peters is scheduled on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” (10 p.m., Comedy Central). Mos Def appears on “Late Show with David Letterman” (10:35 p.m., CBS). Conan O’Brien hosts David Duchovny and Anna Friel on “The Tonight Show” (10:35 p.m., NBC).