FALL TV: "Friday Night Lights" shine(s)

“Friday Night Lights,” airing 7 CT Tuesday on NBC41), is about a small town in Texas that's consumed by high school football.   What makes this show so surprisingly watchable is how it plays the townfolk off their team.

Most sports dramas are all about Our Boys Vs. Their Boys, coach against coach. Indeed, right now there's an elaborate Nike ad campaign running on TV that plays off those clichés. Every commercial ends with the slogan, “Football Is Everything,” and unlike almost everything else on the tube, that's not meant ironically. “Friday Night Lights” asks: What if you had to live that slogan 24/7?

Based on the true-life Buzz Bissinger book that also inspired a movie, this show plays like a documentary. It's a study of Dillon, a (fictional) community obsessed with just one thing. Go out to eat, attend a book club, try to shop and there they are -- the faithful. The fans. The family members of your boys, who are hoping a moment of glory will change all their lives forever. If there's anyone in Dillon who doesn't have an opinion about the team, we don't see or hear from them.  

Coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) has just rolled into Dillon High on a wave of great expectations. He's softer-edged than the coach in Bissinger's book, who callously pulls the names of his seniors off the bulletin board at season's end and throws them into the trash. If they wanted that kind of coach for TV, they wouldn't have cast Chandler. He loves his wife (Connie Britton, equally appealing) and his brainy daughter (Aimee Teegarden) and seems to have time for them even during football season.   And he cares about his kids.

I've seen two episodes of “Friday Night Lights” and so far, it is mostly about these relationships, and much less about the drama of game time.   I can't say enough how “Friday Night Lights” defied my expectations for what a TV show about football would be. A lot of this has to do with the way it was filmed. There's a jumpy, washed-out look and feel to it, not unlike what you see on FX's “The Shield” or “Rescue Me,” which makes sense since NBC's head programmer is Kevin Reilly, who used to hold the same job at FX as those signature shows were being developed.  

But what if most people tuning in are expecting a more conventional show about sports? The expectations of the people of Dillon, Texas, are one thing -- those of NBC's audience another.