“Ted Lasso” arrived on Apple TV+ on August 14, 2020, with a premise built for a joke: an American college football coach takes over an English Premier League club he knows nothing about. The twist is that A.F.C. Richmond’s owner, Rebecca Welton, hired him hoping he would fail. The surprise is that the show works.
Trailer, via Apple TV.
Ted Lasso and the Richmond Job
Jason Sudeikis plays Ted Lasso, a character he first performed in promotional spots for NBC Sports’ Premier League coverage. The series, developed by Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly, follows Ted to England, where Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) has taken ownership of A.F.C. Richmond in a divorce from her unfaithful ex-husband, Rupert. She wants the club ruined because Rupert cared about it more than anything else. Ted, meanwhile, just wants to coach.
That setup could carry a sketch. It carries four seasons instead. The first, ten episodes, dropped its first three at once. A second season of twelve followed on July 23, 2021. The third arrived March 15, 2023, and was meant to be the last. It wasn’t. Apple renewed the show in March 2025, and a fourth season premiered August 5, 2026, running the series to 44 episodes and a final air date of September 15, 2026.
A Cast That Earns the Tone
The ensemble is the engine. Brett Goldstein’s Roy Kent, Juno Temple’s Keeley Jones, Jeremy Swift’s Leslie Higgins and Brendan Hunt’s Coach Beard give Ted people to bounce off, and the writing lets them be funny without turning them into bits. Casting director Theo Park shaped much of this. Nick Mohammed auditioned for Higgins before landing Nate Shelley. Park pushed for Phil Dunster as Jamie Tartt, a role originally conceived for a Latin American character. Toheeb Jimoh’s casting changed Sam Obisanya’s heritage from Ghanaian. Sarah Niles joined season two as sports psychologist Dr. Sharon Fieldstone.
It was really important with that role that [Niles] had a real sense of security and almost completely unflappable.
That is Park on Niles, and it explains why the show’s quieter scenes land as well as its loud ones.
Where the Seasons Sit
| Season | Premiere |
|---|---|
| 1 | August 14, 2020 |
| 2 | July 23, 2021 |
| 3 | March 15, 2023 |
| 4 | August 5, 2026 |
The series ran four seasons and 44 episodes, ending September 15, 2026. The fourth season brought Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely, who takes over as Ted’s son, Henry, from Gus Turner. That is a lot of new faces for a show that had already written its own ending.
The Awards Case
The first season drew 20 Primetime Emmy nominations, the most ever for a first-season comedy. Sudeikis, Waddingham and Goldstein won for their performances, and the series took Outstanding Comedy Series in 2021. Those trophies are not noise. They mark the moment a streaming comedy about kindness stopped being a curiosity and became the thing everyone had to answer to.
What Actually Holds Up
The premise is a gag. The execution is not. Ted’s folksy optimism could have been a single note held for 44 episodes, and the show avoids that by giving Rebecca a real grievance and the players real cynicism. Richmond’s skepticism about Ted is the audience’s skepticism, and the series earns its turn rather than announcing it.
The weaker stretch is the middle. Once the show knows it is beloved, it sometimes confuses warmth with stakes, and the later seasons carry more plot than the first one needed. The new cast in season four is a gamble that a series this settled did not have to take.
Still, the first season remains the argument. Twenty Emmy nominations and a Comedy Series win are the receipts, and the performances hold. Ted Lasso is not the profound statement its fans sometimes claim. It is a very good comedy-drama with an unusually strong cast and a clear idea of what it wants to say about leadership, and it says it without flinching.
7.1/10 (Metacritic 71/100).
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