Friday Night Lights Meets Succession In Christopher Meloni’s Upcoming Hulu Series

Published Sep 6, 2026, 10:16 PM EDT My career in journalism got kicked off after eight years as an active duty Naval Aviator, starting with covering college sports for Inside Lacrosse and SB Nation. After joining the staff at USA Today's For The Win, I started dabbling in pop culture coverage and fell in love with it. I'm happy to talk movies and television any time, and I'm usually listening to music (or an audiobook) in my free time. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Actress Mandy Moore has the absolute best way to convince viewers to watch her new series. In an interview with Variety, Moore spoke about her new Hulu drama, The Land. The actor stated, ""If you love football, if you love family drama, it’s like Friday Night Lights and Succession all kind of rolled into one," The new Hulu series boasts a star-studded cast that includes Moore, Christopher Meloni (Law & Order: SVU), William H. Macy (Shameless), Chloe Bennett (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), and Chace Crawford (The Boys). The Land follows the Durkin family, which owns the Cleveland Browns. With Meloni playing the Browns' coach, the show handles all of the drama that goes on in the NFL both on and off the field. Moore is slated to play Lauren Durkin, the daughter of team owner Hank Durkin (Macy). "Nothing shoots in L.A. so I am so grateful," Moore said while describing filming The Land. “And I get to play an absolute b**** … I get to play this badass, a woman in a man’s world who her entire life she’s been gunning for this one job and will do absolutely anything and breathes this air of sort of desperation and entitlement. It’s so fun to play someone like so wholly different from who I am." Moore also looked to a big name for inspiration when preparing to learn as much as she could about the NFL in a short amount of time. "I still feel like I have so much to learn," Moore explained. "I had some fantastic meetings with some incredible women that are in similar roles at different organizations at the NFL. I’ve been able to pick their brains a little bit. I joked I felt like Taylor Swift, where I was like, ‘Oh, I got to learn all about this.’ I mean, it’s different when your boyfriend-slash-husband is like a player, but I truly knew nothing." Dan Fogelman is on board for The Land as the creator, coming off the success of This Is Us and Paradise. He is no stranger to working with Moore, with the former pop star starring as one of the leads in This Is Us for 106 episodes across six seasons and Fogelman being a writer on Disney's Tangled with Moore as the voice actor for Rapunzel. If the past is any indication, expectations for The Land should be high, as Fogelman has earned 11 Emmy Award nominations — including 2026 nominations for Paradise (Best Drama) and Only Murders in the Building (Best Comedy) — for his work on Paradise, Only Murders in the Building (where he was an executive producer), and This Is Us. The first look at The Land debuted at the 2026 Disney Upfront back in May, and the series promises all of the excitement of a sports series with the drama of the behind-the-scenes dealings. There is no release date set for The Land, but it's expected to drop in early 2027.