Wilfrid Sheed once suggested that not reading Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. because you don’t like baseball is like not reading Balzac because you don’t like boarding houses. So I suggest that not watching Friday Night Lights because you don’t like football, high school, small towns, or West Texas is like not reading Dick Francis because you don’t like horses or Dostoyevsky because you don’t like God. Kyle Chandler is the new coach, Connie Britton his terrific wife, and Scott Porter the star quarterback injured in the first game of the season. The rest is claustrophobic hope and dread.

NBC, premieres October 3, 8 P.M.

Related:

• Archive: “Television”
• Articles by John Leonard
• Table of Contents: September 25, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!