My opinion of Laura Linney is the same as Cameron's opinion of Meryl Streep in Modern Family: Laura Linney is always the right choice. She could play Batman and it would be the right choice. She's perfection.

So it makes sense that she makes her series television debut on Showtime, which is becoming (along with TNT) the home of interesting roles for women, with Nurse Jackie, United States of Tara and Weeds in the lineup.

Linney stars in a dramedy about that most hilarious of subjects — cancer — in Showtime's new series The Big C, premiering Monday night at 9:30.

Diagnosed with stage four melanoma, Linney, as tightly-wound suburban Minnesota teacher Cathy Jamison, decides that rather than follow the expected route of chemotherapy and rubber bracelets, she's going to make the most of the time she has. The series is rather a rebuke to the relentlessly upbeat cancer culture, down to the title, which evokes not only the life-changing enormity of the diagnosis but the weird cultural avoidance of the term, like it's Voldemort.

But rather than get all Eat, Pray, Love about it, she kicks out her infantile husband (the hilarious Oliver Platt), starts teaching her annoying teenage son some lessons (like staging a suicide to let him know it isn't funny to pretend to hurt yourself and locking him in a bathroom until he figures out how to plunge a toilet), and putting on Mel Gibson movies for her summer school class rather than teaching.

And then there's the fun stuff — enjoying a confiscated cigarette, doing cartwheels down the hallway and putting a pool in her tiny backyard. And for anyone who's ever coveted the lamb but ordered the salad, Cathy's announcement to a waiter that she's "just having liquor and desserts" rings as a battle cry.

The decision to keep the cancer a secret would be hard to empathize with were her family not such assholes — husband and son are joined by a homeless eco-warrior brother. Instead, she befriends a slacker student (a stiff Gabourey Sidibe) a grumpy neighbor and her hunky doctor. But her relationships with them change for the better as well.

As she tells her son with the deep, loving ferocity of a mother, "Your dad isn't living here because I only wanted to raise one child and I chose you. And from now on I'm gonna raise you so hard your head's gonna spin."

On a lesser actress Cathy could be heartless, overly sentimental or cliche but in Linney's masterful hands she is selfish, weird, funny and poignant.

The Big C is following Weeds, now in its sixth season with a new direction and new life. For five seasons viewers have watched the ever-escalating shenanigans of an outwardly affluent suburban mom (Mary-Louise Parker) who turns to dealing pot after the death of her husband — arson, Mexican cartels, a tunnel across the border to Tijuana and a couple more husbands. But now the show is dumping all the baggage and starting over — literally.

What Weeds excels at is comedy so ridiculous it nears slapstick, and that's much easier as the stakes have been ratcheted down a notch. Like a Seinfeld of the new millennium, the characters are hilarious, outlandish and lack any sort of moral fiber — all the better to watch themselves get in and out of trouble.

After youngest son Shane murdered an enemy on video in the season finale, the Botwin family is heading north to Canada, dumping the Mexican connections and the long-past-useful neighbor Celia. "Where the Botwins failed, the Newmans will succeed!" says Nancy, envisioning a straight-laced life as hotel employees. Riiiight.

Cathy and Nancy might not be role models by any stretch, but I'll take them over Carrie Bradshaw any day. Long live the bitches!