JPTV: What I'm Watching Tonight

Sundance Channel

I briefly reviewed Sundance Channel's new documentary series, Nimrod Nation, in the current TIME. I'd hoped to expand on that in Tuned In, but a couple deadlines are nudging me in the ribs and saying that's not gonna happen anytime soon, so let me just suggest again that you check it out.

Think Friday Night Lights with basketball instead of football, Michigan's Upper Peninsula instead of Texas, and deer hunting instead of bludgeoning an attempted rapist to death. It's a good-hearted, but not idealized, look at the lifestyle of a forgotten part of the country, where--as in FNL--high-school sports are a source of hope and a microscosm of larger problems (here, tensions between the white and Potawotami Indian neighbors of Watersmeet, Mich.) Heat up a meat pasty and enoy it.