ShareThisBy DUSTY SAUNDERS
Local stations present Friday-night highlights and scores of local prep games.
The screen is inundated seemingly day and night with college contests.
The NFL dominates Sunday and Sunday night. And then there's that 38-year-old sports staple, "Monday Night Football."
So who would blame even the most dedicated coach potato if they looked elsewhere for entertainment when "Friday Night Lights" premieres on Tuesday (8 p.m. EDT/PDT). That would be their loss, though, because NBC's new series about life in a football-crazy Texas town is one of the most compelling new network dramas this fall.
Football serves as a metaphorical backdrop in this tale of small-town life, where residents deal with such complex issues as racism, education, parent-child relationships and teenage sex.
How to deal with such issues? Produce a championship high school football team, regardless of the emotional toll involved. There's a severe case of pigskin fever and nearly all the townspeople are infected.
Fans of H.G. Bissinger's 1988 book of the same title (and the feature film) won't be disappointed by this TV version, created by Peter Berg (Bissinger's cousin), who also produced the film.
Bissinger's book was based on the 1988 season of a high school team in Odessa, Texas. The TV series deals with the fictional rural town of Dillon, where residents exist for those fall Friday nights when the high school Panthers rush onto the field.
While most of the series is being filmed in and around Austin, "Friday Night Lights" has its own football stadium. Producers funded the refurbishment of an unused, dilapidated 15,000-seat structure near the small town of Pflugerville. The stadium eventually will be donated to the community.
"I was a huge fan of the book, which took a deep, comprehensive look at the culture of athletics _ not just Texas football, but athletics in general," Berg says.
Berg, the show's co-producers and Bissinger determined that a weekly TV series could go much deeper than the issues explored in the movie.
The central figure is coach Eric Taylor, played by Kyle Chandler, a role Billy Bob Thornton had in the feature film.
Taylor, a talented football coach with the ability to communicate with his players, quickly begins to feel that he's stuck in the emotional quicksand that dominates the town's win-at-all costs mentality.
Connie Britton reprises her film role as Taylor's wife, and much of the continuing storyline deals with the marital pressures resulting from her husband's job.
The series is well cast, with a number of relatively unknown young actors handling key roles. Jason Street is the quiet, confident quarterback seemingly destined to lead the Demons to a championship until tragedy strikes in the season's first game.
Zach Gilford scores as the shy, bookish quarterback who must take over the quarterback position, while Taylor Kitsch is a troubled, rebellious star running back.
The series appears inundated with gorgeous teenage girls who provide a variety of romantic interests for the high school studs. As in most TV series, teenagers in "Friday Night Lights" look more like 21-year-olds.
The series also scores well in the casting of secondary characters _ parents, townspeople and civic leaders _ that all are a part of the football crazed community.
Production-wise, "Friday Night Lights" is first-rate, often using a cinema verite, up-close-and personal style in dramatic scenes.
And, yes, there are football games, but not every week. Football fanatics should find the simulated game scenes more realistic than what normally shows up in sports and TV movies.
The vaults of all networks are filled with tapes of failed shows that attempted to integrate sports with human-interest drama. There was NBC's "Against the Grain," a 1993 series bearing a striking resemblance to "Friday Night Lights" both in plot and Texas setting.
Berg projects confidence that lukewarm and non-football fans will watch his series.
"We're hoping to transcend the early belief that our show is only for the football community," Berg says. "If we can't transcend that, we hope there are enough sports fans who will take the ride with us."
