Friday Night Lights is a superior version of a story that has been told countless times. The tale of the sporting underdog, in this case a Texan high school American football team, tends to have a crushing inevitability of structure (we’re halfway through the third act: it must be time for the rousing speech with quasi-religious overtones). Friday Night Lights is no exception, although it does have some watchable performances, notably Billy Bob Thornton as the team coach Gary Gaines and Derek Luke as a self-mythologising star player, Boobie Miles.

More interesting, though, is the spectre of crushed dreams and approaching disappointment that haunts these young men, even as their whole community turns out to applaud them. It’s all downhill for most of them from the moment the Friday night spotlights are turned off for the season — a courageously downbeat message for the director, Peter Berg, to give a sports movie.

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