Friday Night Lights

Unfortunately, many television dramas set against a sports background have struggled to find an audience. Consider Clubhouse (CBS, 2004), a baseball drama that aired but five times before being thrown out. Against The Grain (1993, ABC) which lasted a mere eight episodes, and Bay City Blues (NBC, 1983), four episodes.

This strikes me as odd, since Americans are so in love with football and other organized sports. Maybe it's too much of a disconnect to combine sports with a weekly human drama. Perhaps, people who watch sports just want to watch the game, and any human drama should only play itself out on the field.

Or maybe these retired shows simply weren't good enough to make the cut.

But NBC's Friday Night Lights is more than good enough. It's great - great drama, great television, great characters. But not enough people know that. And with its time slot already changed once (from crowded Tuesdays to wide-open Wednesdays), and finishing third among the networks in the eight o'clock hour, this show is also in danger of getting the hook.

FNL is a family drama set against the big blue sky of a small town Texas high school football team. It's based on the 1990 book by H.G. Bissinger and the 1994 movie directed by Peter Berg. Berg developed TV show from the movie, and he's kept it cinematic - wide-screen, three cameras, small shots, a focus on characters and less on dialogue. It's a pleasure to watch a show like this. The characters, starting with the Dillon Panther's coach Eric Taylor, played with toughness and heart by Kyle Chandler, are multi-dimensional and real. The conflict is palpable and absolutely believable, and Berg and the show's writers respect the viewers' intelligence. There's nothing that turns me off faster about a television show (or movie) when it feels it has to spoon-feed me plot, characterizations and conflict. With FNL, I get it. With one look on an actor's face, with one calculated stretch of silence, I can make the leaps. Not only does it make me feel smart but gives me more of a stake in the outcome of the situation.

And few television shows do that.

For instance, in recent episodes, we not just see but feel the stress loaded onto the young shoulders of the team's quarterback, Matt Saracen (played by Zach Gilford). Matt is forced to take care of his grandmother, whose Alzheimer's is worsening, while his father serves in Iraq. When the father comes home on leave, and assesses the situation, he decides to put his mother into a nursing home and send Matt to live with his aunt in Oklahoma. This would mean not just leaving his girlfriend Julie, (the coach's daughter, played by Aimee Teegarden) but missing the rest of the football season, and the Panthers have but two games left until the playoffs. The palpable tension between father and son causes Matt to play so badly in that week's game that he is replaced by the second-stringer.

Rounding out the cast beautifully are the coach's wife (Connie Britton), who is also the high school's guidance counselor; prima donna running back Smash Williams (Gaius Charles), who's thinks he's a cinch for a college scholarship but begins taking steroids to ensure it; the paraplegic former star quarterback Jason Street (Scott Porter) who is trying to pull his life together again, including how he's going to relate to his cheerleader girlfriend Lyla (Minka Kelly); and fullback Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) who needs a serious course in anger management and happens to have slept with Street's girlfriend. But don't expect to see weak-willed Texas long-stemmed roses among the women in the cast. They are strong, and tough, and human, and that's refreshing to see.

But unfortunately, even with all these excellent points to recommend, there's that ratings problem looming ahead of our Panthers like the next game. It can't seem to get a toehold other than its cult following. I'd so hate to see the writers have to "sex it up" (as some of the cast members and writers have speculated in an interview in the January 26 edition of Entertainment Weekly.) But if enough of the loyal following spread the word - and the network gives this very worthwhile show a chance - hopefully it won't get sent to the showers.