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Twenty three minutes into Episode 514, entitled "Ozymandias" after a Shelley poem, Breaking Bad made television history. Except that most fans didn’t notice. They were instead ready to cry, scream, vomit, or hurl a waffle iron at the plasma TV, or some combination of the above.

Sometime around that first commercial break, Breaking Bad broke away from the pack and staked its claim to the title of television's Best Show Ever.

For many people a drama about the travails of a high school football team in small town Texas might not sound like the most appetizing fare. But Friday Night Lights, which makes a long overdue reappearance on British television on Tuesday – the first season was originally shown on ITV4 in 2007 – is one of the best American dramas of recent years. That is admittedly quite a claim in these days of Breaking Bad, The Wire and Mad Men. But Friday Night Lights' appeal lies in the fact that it offers something quite different from many other acclaimed shows: optimism.