I think TV would be a lesser place without Connie Britton. Yes, I’m going there with my admiration for the down-to-earth actress who brought such sympathetic moral and emotional fury to “Friday Night Lights.” She can effortlessly deliver dramatic material that might seem sanctimonious or coy in the hands of lesser actresses. In her years on “FNL,” and even in her single season on the willfully perverse “American Horror Story,” she never really had an inauthentic or overdone moment. Britton finds the truth and humanity in a scene like a compass finds direction.

So obviously I was hoping to like “Nashville,” her new country-music drama on ABC. Adding further hope: The show is created and written by Callie Khouri, who won an Oscar for the “Thelma and Louise” screenplay, and the music is overseen by Khouri’s husband, T-Bone Burnett, the producer behind “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and albums by B.B. King, Gillian Welch, Elvis Costello, and Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. They bring a lot of talent to TV, to say the least. Plus, “Nashville” shares a title — and the same territory — with one of Robert Altman’s greatest movies, as it moves among the lives of country megastars, the wannabes who populate Nashville clubs, and a political campaign.