Jada Pinkett Smith, the actress married to film superstar Will Smith, must be getting a little bored lately. And now she is going to bore some of us.

There is no other explanation for her decision to star in TNT’s routine “HawthoRNe” as the latest strong, flawed woman on the cable network. She plays a feisty nurse who battles the system, her teenage daughter, her mother-in-law and her demons.

The premiere, which airs at 9 tonight on TNT and was promoted to death during the National Basketball Association playoffs, is a busy hour that establishes the relationships between the doctors and nurses at Richmond Trinity Hospital and the potential romances.

There really isn’t anything revolutionary here. The show also suffers from comparison to Showtime’s more depressing, more interesting and more stylish “Nurse Jackie,” in which Edie Falco plays another veteran nurse with demons who has better instincts than the doctors she assists. However, the Showtime audience is a fraction of the size of TNT’s, so not that many people besides TV critics will be making the comparison.

In “HawthoRNe,” you have to be satisfied with an occasional twist that may only be surprising to those who haven’t seen an episode of “ER,” “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Chicago Hope.”

Smith stars as Christina Hawthorne, the chief nursing officer whose mantra to her nurses is do the right thing even if it is against doctor’s orders. She’s a widower with a rebellious teenage daughter, Camille (played by Hannah Hudson). She doesn’t get along with her mother-in- law (Joanna Cassidy) and isn’t really good at getting along with anybody who isn’t homeless, sick, insecure or suicidal.

In other words, she’s very compassionate with people in need but needs to speak her mind with her bosses and many co-workers. She’s tough, she’s wounded and she’s got a good heart.

Dr. Tom Wakefield (Michael Vartan, “Alias”) is the hospital chief who has to keep her in check. The cast also includes David Julian Hirsh as the by-the- book nurse, Christina Moore as the sexy patriotic nurse and Suleka Mathew as the emotionally fragile nurse who appears to be Camille’s best friend and is the most easy to root for.

The cases involving a diabetic war hero and a baby found left at the hospital are pretty routine, but the characters are so appealing and the ending so sentimental that it makes the hospital stay endurable. Rating: 2 stars, out of four

Helping hands

On a more realistic medical note, WNED-TV carries a moving look at Hospice care at 10 tonight in an hourlong documentary “Graceful Passages: The Hospice Journals.”

The film from independent filmmaker Jon R. Hand is the culmination of three years of following around area families under Hospice care as their loved ones approached death with the aid of selfless caregivers and hospice staff.

Sure, there are depressing moments, but the overall theme is that Hospice workers are uplifted by their experiences and actually can walk away from a day’s work much happier than they were working in the emergency room.

That’s because they bring pleasure to families that can overshadow the depression in difficult times. The stories of a ninetysomething man who thrived on Hospice care and the loving relationship between a 77-year-old woman with Lou Gehrig’s disease and her husband are among the most poignant in the low-key but powerful film. Rating: 3q 1/3 t 1/2 r 1/3

More on the meltdown

Before the Hospice special airs, WNED-TV carries the season finale of Frontline, “Breaking the Bank,” which deals with the nation’s financial health. It should be must-see TV for the congressional committee that is currently investigating the influence of federal regulators in Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch.

The film from producer Michael Kirk is essentially a slightly less compelling sequel to the earlier Frontline film, “Inside the Meltdown,” which showed how close America’s banking and financial system was to collapse before the federal bailout program started by President Bush.

This time, Kirk concentrates on the shotgun, arranged marriage between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch through the eyes of their executives, Bank of America’s Kenneth Lewis and former Merrill chief executive officer John Thain.

With the aid of some of the nation’s finest financial journalists, “Breaking the Bank” is another incredible, scary story dealing with miscalculations by government leaders and the egos and unseemly demands of banking executives.

In the end, the miscalculations led to a fundamental change in how the business operates in this country and the world that is still playing out. Rating: 3 stars