NBC is throwing up Hail Mary passes, trying to lure viewers to its fine character drama “Friday Night Lights.” (It’s not all about football, really it isn’t!) Quality-TV fiends who’ve seen the show have fallen for its textured study of the behavioral-games-people-play, in love, in families, in small-town communities. But there haven’t been as many devotees as this involving saga deserves.
Tonight at 7, “Friday Night Lights” adds a cable run on Bravo. Three episodes air tomorrow afternoon (Saturday, March 17) from 2 to 5 p.m. The pattern is repeated next weekend (March 23-24), while the show continues debuting new episodes on NBC Wednesday nights at 8.
Bravo’s episode order doesn’t do new viewers many favors, starting tonight with Episode 18, and backing up tomorrow to show Episodes 16, 17 and 18.
But it’s still worth diving into. Producer Peter Berg, who directed the movie, has broadened beautifully beyond its high school football focus to probe the people involved, to explore the human drive to connect, to achieve, to rebel, to forgive. There aren’t many TV characters as richly depicted as these, nor a regional landscape so evocatively rendered. (The show shoots on location in central Texas.) Berg’s cinematic flair makes this almost a mini-indie-film every week.
True tubeheads might remember how distinctive Berg’s work was on his short-lived drama “Wonderland,” a nervy study of Bellevue shrinks he created for ABC in 2000. They might also remember him playing Dr. Billy Kronk on “Chicago Hope.” Though Berg just took another acting turn in the movie “Smokin’ Aces,” we’re more enamored of his work behind the camera.
Check out these episodes and see if you aren’t, too.
[Kyle Chandler and Scott Porter in NBC photo by Bill Records.]