Peacock scores the Friday Night Lights reboot

NBC's streaming service is headed back to the world of Texas football

By William Hughes  |  December 11, 2024 | 7:23pm
Screenshot: Peacock/YouTube
TV News Friday Night Lights
Peacock scores the Friday Night Lights reboot

Clear heads, old ideas, can’t lose: Deadline reports this afternoon that the threatened reboot of beloved “It’s not really about football” TV series Friday Night Lights is set to land at Peacock. This version of the series—headed up, once again, by original series showrunner Jason Katims, with Lights film director and series developer Peter Berg in a producing role—comes complete with a description that literally includes the phrase “rag tag” and an invocation of natural disasters, so please prepare yourself for some serious underdog sports shenanigans: “Following a devastating hurricane, a rag tag high school football team and their damaged, interim coach make an unlikely bid for a Texas High School State Championship becoming a beacon of light for their town.”

From that brief description, it sounds like the new Friday Night Lights will exist in its own corner of the Texas Football Cinematic Universe, as opposed to revisiting what the Taylors have been up to since the old series went off the air back in 2011. (Berg kicked around the idea of a sequel film shortly after the series ended, but admitted in 2013 that it wasn’t going to happen.) (Never rule out the possibility of a cameo or two to pad things out, though; the Suits guys probably thought they were done at one point, too.)

Friday Night Lights ran for five seasons in its previous incarnation, the first two airing on NBC, and the latter three banished to the outer darkness of DirecTV’s now-defunct 101 Network. Presumably, though, it’s done well enough on streaming in the years since to make bringing back a series with chronically low ratings make some kind of sense.

 
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