My first reaction when I heard the idea is that it won't be good. The subject's good for a book and movie, but all that teenage angst against a stark small-town background can get tiresome really quick.
Still, I was eager to know where this show would be based. They couldn't do it in Odessa, that's been done before, so they'd have to pick some kind of fictionalized West Texas location. And they did, so long as you consider Austin to be West Texas.
Yep, the network morons decided that Austin and the hill country is the perfect location to film a drama about a West Texas football team. The name of the fictionalized town is Dillon:
From acclaimed writer/director Peter Berg and Brian Grazer.
In Dillon, Texas, high school football isn’t just a sport, it’s a way of life. This year, the Dillon Panthers are expected to go all the way. That’s a lot of pressure for Eric Taylor in his first year as head coach. Not to mention, the pressure on the athletes who all have their sights set on college and the NFL. Coach Taylor is ready to mold these boys into champions and encourage them to be better men. Will they rise to the challenge?
Is NBC up to the challenge to keep this show out of lameness? (That would be no.)
To pick nits here, whatever location they come up with in Austin is not going to do justice to the original idea. What made (makes) Odessans nuts about football is that it's the only game in an extremely isolated town. The landscape (described by one reviewer in the Washington Post as "oddly beautiful", which made my day) purveys that sense.
In Austin, high school football plays second fiddle to UT sports. And what's on Sixth Street. And Whole Foods' latest deal on Pinot Noir.
Would have simply been impossible to set up their operations at least somewhere close to the right area? Fort Worth comes to mind.
Whatever. If the show comes on and they have a straight-on kicker, I'm swearing off NBC.
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