“Friday Night Lights” was a show full of delightful surprises, not the least of which was its continued existence. Almost every year of the show’s five seasons, first on NBC and then in a deal between the network and DirecTV, the question arose whether the acclaimed but low-rated drama would return. But a rabid fan following and good critical reviews kept it alive for five full seasons.

“We had no reason to ever believe that we would come back, and yet we always believed we would,” says Connie Britton, who played Tami Taylor, wife to high school football coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler). She originated the role in the 2004 feature film “Friday Night Lights” before joining the TV cast at the urging of Peter Berg, the movie’s co-writer and director. (Berg created the television show, which was then helmed by Jason Katims.)

Emmy nods came for Britton and Chandler last year for their work on Season 4, just after they had finished shooting the fifth and final season. They were nominated again this year, along with Katims and the show itself. “There’s a certain level of poetry to this whole experience,” Britton notes of all the post-cancellation nominations. “Nothing happened on this show in the predictable television ways.”

Critics and fans have been calling Tami and Coach the best couple on TV since the show started. Did you expect that reaction?

Listen, when I was kicking and screaming with Pete Berg at the beginning of this thing, saying this is a terrible idea for me to play this part, I never could have imagined that this would be a football show that was actually about a marriage. That was a shocker.

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