Paging Jackie Peyton: Showtime Renews "Nurse Jackie" for Second Season!

It's as simple as drawing blood.

Just a day after airing the season premiere of new comedy Nurse Jackie, pay cabler Showtime has renewed the Edie Falco-led series for a second season.

The news about the second season pickup of the series, produced by Lionsgate Television, was broken by TVWeek.com's Josef Adalian, who reported that "Jackie earned the best premiere ratings for any Showtime debut since 2004, when Nielsen changed the way it computed premium cable average. The Falco comedy attracted 1.35 million viewers in its two combined Monday runs, according to the ratings company."

In other words: wowsers.

If you couldn't tell from my glowing reviews of Nurse Jackie (and, oh, here), I'm already madly in love with this beautiful and hysterical series and am pleased as punch that Showtime would give the series such a ringing endorsement by picking it up for a second year so soon after launching it. Something very happily tells me we'll be hanging out with Jackie Peyton for many, many years to come.

Nurse Jackie airs Monday evenings at 10:30 pm ET/PT on Showtime.