Peacock scored a big win the other day when it won the rights to Universal's "Friday Night Lights" reboot (h/t Deadline).
NBC's streaming service has had a good year. It's now undeniably one of the best streaming services, it started turning a profit and its original show "The Day of the Jackal" has been a hit. Now, it's beaten out Netflix for this reboot of the beloved 2000s TV show. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose indeed.
But it's not easy to get a reboot right. Yes, Peacock managed to do it this year with the aforementioned "The Day of the Jackal." And the "Friday Night Lights" reboot is bringing back the original showrunner Jason Katims, its original director Peter Berg and one of the original executive producers Brian Grazer.
However, Peacock's spy thriller reboot worked because it avoided simply retreading the waters already explored in the source material. If this reboot, which is adapting a TV show based on a book that had already been adapted into a movie in 2004, then it cannot return to Dillon, Texas. We've already mined the source material more than a dried-out Permian Basin oil well.
'Friday Night Lights' needs to copy 'Fargo'
The good news is that the new "Friday Night Lights" series seems to know that it cannot go back to West Texas. But it's not leaving the state entirely. According to the Deadline's reporting on the announcement, the new show "will be set following a devastating hurricane, when a rag-tag high school football team and their damaged, interim coach make an unlikely bid for a Texas High School State Championship and become a beacon of light for their town."
After reading that logline, the first thought that popped into my head was "This could be the next 'Fargo.'" FX's anthology series is an excellent roadmap for how to reboot a property. It takes the general themes and motifs of the source material and keeps to its general tone as well. But it crafts entirely new stories that aren't beholden to fan service or continuity from the original property. Each season is essentially a brand-new story.
That is the model "Friday Night Lights" needs to follow. Take the same model of the original show — a football team in a small close-knit community — and explore the depths of that community's characters as much as the football, if not more. Don't call back to the original show beyond maybe an offhand reference or a fun Easter egg. Keep this separate and fresh. Make sure it's a reboot and not a remake.
The show should copy "Fargo" even further and make it an anthology series the same way FX did when it rebooted the beloved Coen Brother's film. That way, the story never gets stale, and they can continue the series for as long as there are new stories to tell.
Plus, the acting talent you could bring in each season could be incredible. "Fargo" certainly manages to bring in great actors year after year. But even if it does a multi-season serialized story like the original show, it needs to just hold firm to the rule of "reboot, not remake." As long as the show does that, I'll be excited to watch it.
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