KEY POINTS:
Anyone who questions the appeal of C4's new drama Friday Night Lights - a drama about a high school gridiron team - need only look to the Olympics for an answer.
If ever there was proof you don't need to follow, or even understand, a sport to find it compelling, the Olympics is certainly it.
Last week, I had no idea there was such a thing as team pursuit cycling. Yet this week, I sat enthralled as our team took on the Aussies to win bronze. I'm still not sure how the sport works, or why one of the cyclists drops out before the race is over, but I don't need to. Their faces say it all.
Friday Night Lights works on a similar premise. Though it centres around American football, it is the human emotion and turmoil that make it so fascinating.
That, and the fact it is steeped in reality. The small town of Dillon, Texas, could be anywhere. Gridiron aside, it could just as easily be Te Awamutu or Huntly.
We've all been somewhere like Dillon. We all understand those small town politics.
Likewise, the characters are all regular teenagers, dressed in cheap, chain-store clothes. When they wake up, they're bleary-eyed, dishevelled and incapable of forming coherent sentences. Just like every other 16-year-old in the world.
Well, except those tottering around in 7" Christian Louboutins on Gossip Girl. Indeed, there could be no world more diametrically opposite to Dillon, than Manhattan's Upper East Side.
So it's interesting that TV2 has put its new teen drama up against the critically acclaimed FNL.
In America, FNL was praised as being the type of television people say they want to watch. Gossip Girl, on the other hand, has earned widespread condemnation for being overly racy and unrealistic. Which it undoubtedly is.
Watching the series' two-hour premiere last week, I gasped (like a ridiculous old biddy) as 16-year-old Blair Waldorf waltzed around in her white lace negligee. Honestly, there are brides who have worn less provocative undies. Hell, there are strippers who have worn less provocative ensembles.
But as the kids run around town (actually they are ferried around in chauffeured limos) drinking champagne, smoking drugs and getting their mack on in swanky bars, you realise they are not actually that dissimilar to the teens of Dillon - or anywhere else. Swap the limos for pick up trucks, the champagne for beer (or Bernadino if you're from Howick) and swanky bars for your mate's garage, and suddenly it seems the two worlds are not as disparate as they first appear.
The question is: What would you rather watch? The reality or the fantasy?
While FNL has been praised as the type of TV we should be watching, Gossip Girl has been labelled "guilty pleasure" viewing. People won't admit to watching it, but secretly they're addicted.
To be fair, both have their points. FNL really is good television. And appeals to men in a market dominated by female-oriented viewing. Gossip Girl, however, is glossy, frivolous crap. Which, come Friday night, is all most people can cope with.
While choosing one over the other may say something about you, if you look closely enough both are actually saying the same thing about teenagers.
