JAN MOIR MY VIEW

TV’s awash with sport, so why are there no sports-based dramas, asks this Mail writer

Friday Night Lights. There it was, lurking in a corner of Netflix, all five series of this little-heralded US drama, based around a high school football team in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas. The high point of local life is when the Dillon Panthers ( go Panthers!) play their Friday evening match and the stadium spotlights are switched on. I can’t even remember why I started watching it. Sports, teenagers, moms, dads and plates of ribs? So very not me. Yet now it’s one of my favourite series ever. Now I understand what a quarterback is, and why he’s so important to the game.

Which made me wish there was more sportsbased drama on British television, as entertainment but also as a gateway to understanding and appreciating team spirit and athletic endeavour. After all, there is no shortage of actual sport on the box. Important football matches are shown on rotation throughout the season. There is horse racing every afternoon. When the cricket is on, it’s on all day.

Yet dramas based around these national sporting obsessions? Not a whistle. The only one I can recall is Footballers’ Wives, which barely strayed near a pitch anyway. Perhaps Brits prefer their dramas in cop shops and stately homes.

Yet like all great sports-based drama, Friday Night Lights is not really about sport – it’s about the journey made through the sport by those whose lives are touched by it. Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) is the key figure, a gifted trainer of young souls as well as the finer points of the touchdown. An upstanding man of few words, Coach – with a capital C, please – always tries to do the right thing. Rarely seen out of his shorts and his frown, he is husband to feisty Tami (brilliant Connie Britton) and father to teenage Julie (Aimee Teegarden).

So far, so ordinary. But where Friday Night Lights shines is in its depiction of a small-town community and the hopes and dreams of those who live there. With a crack ensemble cast of handsome young actors, rarely has the pain and joy of adolescence been so artfully captured on the small screen. Issues such as racism, drugs, poverty, loyalty and whether or not Julie should get an ankle tattoo are deftly dealt with. And all of the action is paved with delicious Texas accents, as thick as molasses.

Inspired by the non-fiction book Friday Night Lights and the 2004 film that followed, this show is unique in many ways. Shot entirely on location in Texas with no rehearsals, it is stamped with raw authenticity like a brand fizzing on a steer’s hide. When Eric and Tami argue, they argue like a real married couple. That’s not the main reason why I love it so much. But it sure helps. Friday Night Lights is on netflix.co.uk.