"Ted Lasso is one of my favourite TV shows. But the case for Season 4? I'm not so sure."
It was the sleeper hit of 2020 about a folksy coach handed a chance in a sport alien to him. It was wildly popular and ran its course over three seasons. But now there's more
I’ve loved Ted Lasso on Apple TV+ unconditionally since it first aired in 2020, a godforsaken year when the planet was in the grip of Covid, politics was becoming ever more insane and my own world had flown off its axis.
It goes without saying the programme was and remains “Marmite” TV, something you adore or hate, and I understand why.
The very premise of it was absurd: an American lower-level gridiron coach bumbling his way into managing an English Premier League team, the fictional AFC Richmond.
I can see how this fish-out-of-water sitcom with its forced positivity and predictable gags - as its detractors would argue - might grate. So too an unrelenting, even sickly, optimism. (I can beg to differ).
If you have followed Sporting Intelligence for a few years, you’ll know I’ve joked before that I would happily undertake a PhD on Ted Lasso, because it became a phenomenon.
It was a blockbuster global hit, record-breaking in its popularity, and also in its awards nominations (and wins) and had a wider cultural impact. In March 2023, the cast (below) were invited to The White House by President Biden for “a conversation on mental health”, a recurring topic in all three seasons.
That was meant to be it. Three seasons. But a fourth is about to go into production, and likely be on our screens next year.
Which is why I’ve decided to do that PhD, or rather this essay, on the reasons I found Ted Lasso so affecting; and why I think it was so crazily popular among those who did like it; and why I have misgivings about it being revived.