Friday Night Lights

Can the best family show on the tube find a family audience? The Cincinnati Post, which has been taking a look at each night of the new TV season, sure hopes so.

Finally, NBC moved Friday Night Lights to Friday in a no-brainer.

NBC previously switched the show from Tuesday to Wednesday last fall, clueless that it already came branded as perfect Friday night family viewing.

A touching, wonderfully acted small-town family drama, centered on a high school football team, FNL was rudely ignored by the Emmy Awards and has found a similar fate among viewers.

Just looking at the ratings, NBC would not have been blamed for axing the show.

But it's good... so good that even a cold hearted, network realized it was hard to kill off this kind of quality... at least without giving it another chance.

It's time for those who complain about the lack of solid family dramas on TV to give Friday Night Lights a chance.

Last year it used its microcosm of small-town life to poignantly explore family dynamics, teen sexuality and drinking, marital infidelity, racism and, of course (but only peripherally), the allure and pressures of high school football.

It did so with incredible sensitivity, using a small town's passion for football as a metaphor for a number of very real issues facing American families.

Kyle Chandler's Coach Taylor and Connie Britton's mom make for the sanest and most compassionate parents on TV, not to mention a role model marriage.