Ted Lasso, Apple TV+’s surprise hit series, returned this year for its sophomore season. The show follows the eponymous NCAA football coach (Jason Sudeikis), who accepts the job as the coach of an English Premier League soccer team despite knowing nothing about soccer or England. Sudeikis debuted the character in a 2013 sketch promoting NBC’s coverage of Premier League matches in the United States, in which Lasso takes over the coaching of the English soccer team Tottenham.
The original sketch — and a follow-up sketch a year later, in which a post-firing Lasso gives his thoughts on England while coaching a middle school girls soccer team in the U.S. — went viral, amassing over 20 million views. The concept clearly had legs, and Sudeikis’s then-partner Olivia Wilde suggested that he develop it into a TV show.
In 2017, Sudeikis tapped Bill Lawrence, creator of the beloved medical sitcom Scrubs, to co-create, co-write, and produce the project. American characters in British productions and British characters in American productions have a tendency to be unrecognizable to viewers in the countries they are supposed to be from, even when the actor is from the “right” place. Ted Lasso nipped this problem in the bud by drawing in writers from both countries. The result is that the characters all feel believably tied to place, with accents and slang that make the Brits feel British and the Americans feel like Americans.
But how does a clueless college football coach end up running a soccer team in England? As we learn in season one, Lasso gets the job thanks to a marriage gone wrong. An adulterous business mogul loses his beloved though middling Premier League team AFC Richmond to his ex-wife Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), who sets off on a mission to destroy the thing he holds most dear by bringing down the team. The revenge plot makes Lasso’s absurd hiring believable and provides a counterweight to the main plot following him and his team.
Sudeikis’s Lasso is an embodiment of the virtues of Middle America, an avatar of Midwestern nice rather than the ugly American. It’s almost surprising to see a character like this on a major TV show. Lasso is perhaps something of a rube, but he’s not a caricature of a backward flyover American. It’s possible, given Sudeikis’s background as a varsity athlete in Kansas, that the character is inspired by some of his own coaches and mentors. And Lasso’s positivity, paired with the deadpan humor of his right-hand man, Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), makes for a sharp contrast with the show’s cynical Brits, from the regulars at the local sports pub to Fleet Street reporters to, of course, the athletes.
When Lasso and Beard arrive in England, they discover their club’s locker room is in a cold war between the cocky young hotshot Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), who sees himself as above the rest of the team, and team captain and past-his-prime legend Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein, who wrote the character). Tartt bullies many of his teammates relentlessly, and Kent sees in him the worst of his own younger self. The rest of the team is a diverse mix of players from around the world, such as the homesick young Nigerian Sam Obisanya (Toheeb Jimoh) and Mexican ace striker Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernandez).
This divided locker room proves the ideal setting for Ted’s character-first approach to coaching. In dealing with the team’s conflicts, he’s able to win over his players and improve their performance despite his lack of understanding of the sport. This enrages Rebecca, as it places her plan in jeopardy, and she takes steps to sabotage his efforts. The writers weave these two trajectories together well and use them to build a real sense of momentum in the plot. By the first season’s end, everyone is on the same side, but it’s not enough to prevent Richmond from being relegated to the second division.
Season two, then, begins at a low point for the team but a high point for personal relationships. While coaches and players all want to get back into the Premier League, this plot is in the background in the early episodes, which instead focus on individual characters. In “Do The Right-est Thing,” Sam discovers that the team’s sponsor is embroiled in corruption and abuse in Nigeria, leading him to protest. For a “social issues episode,” it’s nuanced and specific rather than rote and predictable, and it shows the soft-spoken character take on a leading role. “Carol of the Bells” explores how team director Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift), his wife, and their many children — the good-natured Middle England equivalents of Ted’s Midwestern nice — host the foreign players at Christmastime knowing that they’re far from home.
After Ted Lasso’s surprise success last year, a repeat was not guaranteed, but season two has had a strong start. It seems to me that the writers understand the particular type of anticipation that keeps a fan tuning in to his favorite team every week and that they structure the narrative around it. This year, I’ll definitely be rooting for AFC Richmond.
Jibran Khan is a freelance writer and researcher. From 2017 to 2019, he was the Thomas L. Rhodes fellow at the National Review Institute.
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Tags: TV, Apple, Streaming Video, Sports, Soccer, Comedy, England
Original Author: Jibran Khan
Original Location: In Ted Lasso, Midwestern Nice comes to England