Friday Night Lights, DVD review The last few years have seen a slew of critically acclaimed American dramas and comedies in which the setting is aggressively metropolitan: The Wire, Mad Men, and HBO's Girls all rely on cities (Baltimore and New York) for the stories they build around their characters, with the latter two shows also playing on the tension between suburban and urban living. Creator and producer Peter Berg's Friday Night Lights, by contrast, is the only recent US series set in dustbowl America that has enjoyed fawning reviews. Taking place in the fictional small-town of Dillon, Texas, the drama follows the travails of a high school's American football team led by coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler). Evenings in Dillon are spent in the same fast-food joint or on moody drives through anonymous streets, with the occasional stop to duff up unfortunate inferiors in the school's strict hierarchy. If this sounds a lot like a yokel version of teen drama The OC, it is, with many replicas of the wooden Ryan from that series but few with the qualities of comic relief we found in his friend Seth. In fact, FNL eschews any form of irony whatsoever in favour of an earnest look at teenage woe, paralysis through sport injury, and the tumultuous marriage of coach Taylor and his wife Tami (Connie Britton). The first season came out in the US in 2006 and a slot on ITV4 a couple of years ago did little to promote it to a British audience. It is now being shown again on Sky Atlantic, which is perhaps why the box set of the first series is finally available here. At times it's hard not to laugh at some of the supposedly poignant dialogue: "Come on coach, football's all I got," pleads bad boy Bobby Reyes (Walter Perez) at one point. And if your sensibilities lean away from sentimentality and moral lessons learnt the hard way, this is not the series for you. It is, however, very well acted in parts, especially by Britton and Chandler. Gaius Charles is superb too, his performance as Smash full of bravado and pumped-up aggression as he struggles to achieve his ambition to play for a national team. FNL paints a portrait of a suffocating town where everyone knows one another and its young footballers are gods, feted by hyperlocal radio and television. For its fans, this is the show's greatest asset, as a true depiction of life for a vast number of Americans in the rural Midwest and South. Brits might be less convinced. Friday Night Lights: Season One is out on DVD now