Friday Night Lights gets a full season

Good news from acros the Atlantic: Variety reports that new TV drama series Friday Night Lights has been picked up for a full season. The show about life in a small Texas town where everything revolves around the successes [and failures] of a local sports team has wowed critics but struggled for ratings.

The fact FNL is ostensibly about American football means it will struggle even more to find an audience outside the US. That's a shame, as it's one of the best things I've seen on TV this year - powerful and moving, with great, subtle writing. Bizarrely, I understand ITV has bought the UK broadcast rights to FNL. Grud alone knows when and where they'll schedule it. But it's well worth watching, if you get the chance.

FNL screens on NBC in America, a channel trying to climb out of a hole at the moment [much like ITV in Britain]. That may have saved the series, as NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly told Variety: 'We gave it probably the toughest hour on the schedule and yet, while it's been doing modest ratings, it's been holding its own. If you hang on to good work, eventually the word gets around.' [FNL's been up against the US version of Strictly Come Dancing, which is just as much a ratings juggernaut as its UK progenitor.]