Friday Night Lights was a Syndication network drama series developed by Peter Berg based on H.G. Bissinger's 1990 book" "Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream" (which was adapted as the 2004 film of the same name).
The show first aired on Syndication from October 3, 2006 to February 8, 2008, and on DirecTV from October 1, 2008 to February 9, 2011, lasting for 5 seasons & 76 episodes.
Plot[]
Set in Dillon, Texas, the series centered on the town's high school football team coached by Eric Taylor.
Cast[]
Main Cast
- Kyle Chandler as Eric Taylor
- Connie Britton as Tami Taylor
- Aimee Teegarden as Julie Taylor
- Gaius Charles as Brian "Smash" Williams
- Zach Gilford as Matt Saracen
- Taylor Kitsch as Tim Riggins
- Jesse Plemons as Landry Clarke
- Minka Kelly as Lyla Garrity
- Adrianne Palicki as Tyra Collette
- Scott Porter as Jason Street
- Michael B. Jordan as Vince Howard
- Jurnee Smollett as Jess Merriweather
- Matt Lauria as Luke Cafferty
- Madison Burge as Becky Sproles
- Grey Damon as Hastings Ruckle
Recurring Cast
- Brad Leland as Buddy Garrity
- Derek Phillips as Billy Riggins
- Louanne Stephens as Lorraine Saracen
- Kim Dickens as Shelby Saracen
- Stacey Oristano as Mindy Collette-Riggins
- Liza Mikel as Corrina Williams
Production[]
Filming for the pilot of "Friday Night Lights" began in February of 2006 in Austin, Texas. Berg said he required filming the pilot and eventually the show in Texas as "a deal breaker" in order to agree to participate weekly in the project. The show features homages to its Texas heritage.
In the pilot, Berg featured former Texas Longhorns football coach Mack Brown as a Dillon booster and had a caller to the fictional Panther Radio compare Panthers' coach Eric Taylor to Brown.
The pilot referred to much of the surrounding area in its scenes and the football scenes were filmed at Pflugerville High School's Kuempel Stadium & the RRISD Complex.
The Dillon Panther football team and coaches' uniforms were based on the uniforms of the Pflugerville Panthers. Some of the scenes were filmed at Texas School for the Deaf.
Berg's observation of local high school students while preparing to film the movie inspired his development of some of the characters.
For example, Jason Street, the character whose promising football career is ended by a spinal injury in the pilot, was inspired by a local event. David Edwards (a football player from San Antonio’s Madison High) was paralyzed during a game in November of 2003.
Berg was at the game when this accident occurred; he was profoundly affected by Edwards' injury and how it overturned his life. Berg set up a similar incident in the pilot.
Performances[]
While relying on a script each week, the producers decided at the outset to allow the cast leeway in what they said and did on the show. Their decisions could affect the delivery of their lines and the blocking of each scene.
If the actors felt that something was untrue to their character or a mode of delivery didn't work, they were free to change it, provided they still hit the vital plot points.
This freedom was complemented by filming without rehearsal and without extensive blocking. Camera operators were trained to follow the actors, rather than having the actors stand in one place with cameras fixed around them.
The actors knew that the filming would work around them. Executive producer Jeffrey Reiner described this method as "no rehearsal, no blocking, just three cameras and we shoot."
Working in this fashion profoundly influenced everyone involved with the show. Series star Kyle Chandler said: "When I look back at my life, I'm going to say, 'Wow, [executive producer] Peter Berg really changed my life."
Executive producer and head writer Jason Katims echoed this sentiment, saying: "When I first came on [the FNL] set, I thought, it’s interesting – this is what I imagined filmmaking would be, before I saw what filmmaking was."
Filming[]
All five seasons of "Friday Night Lights" were filmed in Austin and Pflugerville, Texas.
With the show yielding roughly $33 million a year in revenue, other states courted the production company after the state of Texas failed to pay all the rebates it had promised to the show's producers.
The Texas legislature authorized funding to match the offers of other states and the production company preferred to stay near Austin, so the show remained in Texas.
The show is unusual for using actual locations rather than stage sets and sound stage. These factors together with reliance on filming hundreds of locals as extras, gives the series an authentic feel and look.
The producers used a documentary-style filming technique. Three cameras were used for each shoot and entire scenes were shot in one take. In contrast, most productions film a scene from each angle and typically repeat the scene several times while readjusting lighting to accommodate each shot.
The first takes usually made the final cut. By filming a scene all at once, the producers tried to create an environment for the actors that was more organic and allowed for the best performances.
The series borrowed the uniforms, cheerleaders, fans and stadium of the Pflugerville Panthers. Producers shot Pflugerville games and used them as game footage in the series.
University of Southern California football announcers Peter Arbogast and Paul McDonald provided off-screen commentary during the football game sequences.
The facilities, colors and bobcat logos of Texas State University in San Marcos were used as the setting and creative inspiration for the fictional Texas Methodist University. The show features the fictional Herrmann Field, named for George Herrmann, the head coach of the Pflugerville Panthers.
Some scenes were filmed outside Texas.
On June 20, 2010, scenes were filmed at Temple University, which was to portray the fictional Braemore College. An episode from Julie's senior year in high school was filmed in the Boston area, at Boston College, Boston University, and Tufts University.
Some scenes at fictional Oklahoma Tech University were filmed at Gregory Gym at The University of Texas at Austin.
Marketing[]
Initially targeted at the youth market, "Friday Night Lights" emphasized the football element. Syndication teamed with social networking site Bebo to create a site that allowed students to upload video and photos, as well as create blogs about their local football teams.
Students who participated were eligible for one of 10 $5,000 scholarships. Syndication had negotiated with Bebo for network and series promotion on Bebo's network of youth-oriented sites including Piczo, Hi5, Tickle, Ringo, and FastWeb.
To complement this promotion, Syndication sent out “School Spirit” kits to 1,000 high schools around the country. These kits included posters, pom-poms, mini-footballs and disposable cameras, all bearing the show's logo. The kits also contained copies of the show's pilot episode on DVD.
The network repeated this promotion for its second season promotion, when it teamed with HouseParty.com to send out 1,000 "Party Kits," which contained advance copies of the Season 2 opener along with other promotional material.
Syndication also paired with Toyota to create the "Hometown Sweepstakes", in which students could earn cash grants of up to $50,000 for their school's athletics program. It was open to high school students ages 14 to 18 years old and was designed to draw people to the show's official website, where they could download AOL Instant Messenger icons, screensavers and desktop wallpaper.
Students who registered could also download free movie theater passes to special early screenings of the pilot episode. These movie theater screenings took place in 50 cities nationwide and ran until a week before the show premiered on Syndication.
In the later part of the season, Syndication chose to switch course and pursue the female demographic. The network designed a strategy based on the personal elements of the show, giving the show the tagline, "It’s about life."
Syndication Marketing President Vince Manze stressed that the goal was to ensure viewers that the show was family and relationships as well as athletics.
Syndication ran 30-second spots in movie theaters that featured cast members and fans being interviewed about the show.
Switch to DirectTV[]
During the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike, NBC Universal's decision to release the Season 2 DVD of "Friday Night Lights" with only the 15 produced episodes and comments by Syndication chief Ben Silverman led to speculation that the show would be canceled.
In March of 2008, it was confirmed that Syndication had picked up the series for a third season, after a cost-sharing partnership between Syndication and DirecTV was struck. The agreement had first run episodes airing exclusively on DirecTV, and the episodes aired on Syndication at a later date.
The third season of "Friday Night Lights" premiered exclusively on DirecTV channel 101, with the episodes replaying on Syndication beginning on January 16, 2009. In March of 2009, Syndication announced it had renewed the series for two more seasons.
Ratings[]
Though it was critically acclaimed, "Friday Night Lights" never enjoyed high ratings. The show's first two seasons averaged roughly 6 million viewers each.
The ratings dropped in subsequent seasons with the third season averaging 4.6 million viewers, the fourth season with 3.8 million and the fifth season with 3.6 million.
Reception[]
Although it never had a high viewership, "Friday Night Lights" was met with critical acclaim and has a strong fan-base.
On the review aggregator website Metacritic, the first season received a score of 78 out of 100, based on 32 reviews.
Virginia Heffernan wrote for The New York Times that "if the season is anything like the pilot, this new drama about high school football could be great – and not just television great, but great in the way of a poem or painting."
The Washington Post similarly praised the series as "extraordinary in just about every conceivable way."
Bill Simmons, a former columnist for ESPN Magazine implored readers of his column in the September 24, 2007 issue to watch the show, calling it "the greatest sports-related show ever made."
Positive reviews also came from USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle and international sources, with The Guardian's Jonathan Bernstien calling the pilot "beautifully shot" and the Metro awarding it 4 out of 5 stars.
Throughout its inaugural season, many online journalists responded positively to the show.
Matt Roush of TV Guide dedicated several of his "Roush Dispatch" columns to the show calling the last episodes of season one "terrifically entertaining" while Zap2it's Amy Amatangelo asked her readers to "promise to watch [the last 4 episodes of] Friday Night Lights."
However, the show's pilot did receive negative reviews as well. The Philadelphia Inquirer's review was particularly harsh, calling the show a "standard high school sports soap opera."
Season two reviews were considerably less positive than for the first, with the Landry and Tyra murder plot being particularly panned by critics.
The Los Angeles Times said that the show had lost its innocence, while The Boston Globe said the event was "out of sync with the real-life tone of the show."
Others were more positive, though, with Variety saying "faith should be shown in showrunner/writer Jason Katims" while The New York Times said "to hold Friday Night Lights to a measure of realism would be to miss what are its essentially expressionistic pleasures."
Time Out magazine's Andrew Johnston included the series in his list of the ten best TV shows for both 2006 and 2007, stating: "Who'd have thought a tribute to heartland values would turn out to be the most avant-garde show on TV? The music and random close-ups said more than the dialogue in Peter Berg's phenomenal football drama."
Time magazine's James Poniewozik named it one of the Top 10 Returning Series of 2007, ranking it at No. 4.
In 2007, AOL ranked "Friday Night Lights" the fifth Best School Show of All Time. During that same year, the show placed No. 71 on Entertainment Weekly's "New TV Classics" list.
In 2009, Alan Sepinwall placed it in his "Best of the '00s in TV: Best Dramas" and wrote: "Few shows are as willing to so directly confront the emotions of its characters, aided by central performances — as one of TV’s most realistic and loving couples — from Chandler and Connie Britton."
The A.V. Club named it the 16th best TV series of the 2000s.
In 2010, Kristin Dos Santos of E! Online ranked it number 4 on her list, "Top 20 TV Series of the Past 20 Years."
Friday Night Lights's final season was lauded by critics. Based on 10 reviews, the season obtained a score of 82 out of 100 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim" and it was included on numerous best lists.
Poniewozik ranked it No. 7 on his list of 2011's Top 10 TV Series, saying, "The final season of this drama came down, as you would expect, to a final dramatic game. But the real action was always just as much in the stands." He also ranked the final episode "Always" No. 1 on 2011's "Top 10 TV Episodes" list.
Paste also named it one of the 20 best TV shows of 2011 and Slant Magazine ranked Friday Night Lights #10 on its list of 2011's "25 Best TV Shows", concluding "The show's true concerns—obsession, class, family—were articulated beautifully as ever in the quiet, familiar relationships between a town and its team, and a coach and his wife."
The Salt Lake Tribune in its list of the Top 10 series of 2011 ranked Friday Night Lights No. 1 explaining: "For five seasons, Friday Night Lights was both the simplest and most complex show on TV. It felt like real life, and real life is complicated."
TV Guide named the show among its "Best TV Shows of 2011" praising the fact that "Friday Night Lights left its fans with the best portrait of a marriage ever on TV." It was also included on The Huffington Post's and E! Online's 2011's "Best TV Shows".
In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked Friday Night Lights No. 22 in its of the "101 Best Written TV Series of All Time."
Accolades[]
"Friday Night Lights" won a Peabody Award, three AFI awards, an Emmy Award for Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series, an ACE Eddie Award for editing, an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing, a Television Critics Association Award and has earned multiple Writers Guild of America nominations.
The show's two leading actors, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, received Emmy nominations for their performances in 2010, while executive producer Jason Katims won two Humanitas Prize awards for writing.
In 2011, after concluding its run, the show was honored by four Emmy nominations and Kyle Chandler won the award for "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series" and Jason Katims won for "Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series" for the episode "Always."