REMEMBER HOW it just seemed to make sense last season when NBC finally put "Friday Night Lights" on Friday nights?

Things are about to get a little more complicated.

As the show's third season premieres tomorrow, it's doing so only on DirecTV's 101 Network, part of a deal NBC struck last spring to save one of television's best shows from cancellation.

As deals go, it's better than the one that had the show making a naked bid for higher ratings last season by having two of its characters hide a body.

But maybe not quite as good as the one that merely had the writers mentioning the name of a certain restaurant chain at every opportunity (a deal that appears to still be firmly in place in the two new episodes I've seen so far).

Here's how it works: DirecTV subscribers get to see the show first (and can even catch it in reruns at 9 p.m. Fridays) and when the season's 13 episodes have finished on the satellite provider's network, "FNL" is supposed to head over in February to NBC, which no doubt hopes the show's small-but-passionate fan base won't have illegally downloaded it somewhere in the meantime.

Of course, on satellite, it's going to be commercial-free, so it's been suggested that NBC viewers may not see every single thing DirecTV customers do.

From the two episodes DirecTV was kind enough to send out to critics - and yes, I'm kissing up in hopes of keeping the supply lines open - I'd say NBC viewers needn't worry they're missing some tarted-up version of "Lights," even if the mercurial Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly) seems to have cast off chastity once again.

Instead, the show seems to have gotten back to basics, with high school football coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) back in Dillon, Texas, where he belongs, and the Dillon Panthers facing the challenges inherent in a game in which players have a way of graduating and moving on.

Not moving on yet is one of last year's stars, "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles), who appears to have lost his nerve along with his athletic scholarship.

Moving up is Eric's wife, Tami (Connie Britton), who's now the high school principal, a job that's guaranteed to bring her into conflict with Eric sooner rather than later.

Not moving out yet: their daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden), who is getting her first job. (Guess where.)

I'd put Kelly and Teegarden up against the entire casts of any of the CW's pretty-girl shows, but it's the truly gorgeous Adrianne Palicki as Tyra Collette, a girl born on the wrong side of just about everything that runs through Dillon, who'll break hearts this season as she - and we - discover just how high those barriers can be.

Nerds across the ocean

And it would be easy to see someone hiring, say, "The Big Bang Theory's" Chuck Lorre, or "Chuck's" Josh Schwartz, to remake "The IT Crowd" (10 tonight, IFC), about the members of a computer-support team, with all-American nerds for an all-American audience.

Yet I suspect anyone who's ever called a "help" desk seeking actual help, only to be asked, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" won't need a translator to laugh themselves silly over "The IT Crowd." *

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