FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Encore, 8:00 p.m. ET
This is the 2004 movie that led to the 2006 NBC series, and a few things are significantly different. The small Texas town is Odessa, not Dillon. The football team is called the Permian Panthers, and their head coach is named Gary Gaines, and played by Billy Bob Thornton. But there are some strong similarities, too — the movie's director is Peter Berg, who helped adapt Friday Night Lights as a weekly series. And the coach's wife, though a very small role in the film, is played by Connie Britton, the same actress who signed on to play Tami Taylor, the wife of Kyle Chandler's Coach Eric, on NBC. But whether you compare or contrast, or just enjoy this movie on its own, it's a gripping experience.