Ted Lasso

Ted Lasso (/ˈlæsoʊ/ LASS-oh) is an American sports comedy-drama television series developed by Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly. It is based on a character Sudeikis portrayed in a series of promotional media for NBC Sports's coverage of England's Premier League. The show follows Ted Lasso, an American college football coach who is hired to coach an English soccer team whose owner secretly hopes his inexperience will lead it to failure; instead, Lasso's folksy, optimistic leadership proves unexpectedly successful.
The first season of 10 episodes premiered on Apple TV+ on August 14, 2020. The first three episodes were released at once, followed by weekly installments of the remaining seven. A second season of 12 episodes premiered July 23, 2021. In October 2020, it was renewed for a third season of 12 episodes, which premiered March 15, 2023. In March 2025, it was announced that the series was renewed for a fourth season.
The series has received critical acclaim, with particular praise for its performances (notably Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Phil Dunster, Brett Goldstein, Nick Mohammed, and Juno Temple), humor, writing, themes, and uplifting tone. Among other accolades, its first season was nominated for 20 Primetime Emmy Awards, becoming the most nominated first-season comedy in Emmy history. Sudeikis, Waddingham, and Goldstein won for their performances, and the series won the 2021 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series. Sudeikis also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series. The series repeated all three of those awards the next year.
Ted Lasso, an American college football coach, is unexpectedly recruited to coach a fictional English Premier League soccer team, AFC Richmond, despite having no experience coaching soccer. The team's owner, Rebecca Welton, gained ownership of the team in a divorce from her unfaithful ex-husband, Rupert. She has hired Lasso, secretly hoping he will cause the team's downfall and devastate Rupert, who cared more about AFC Richmond than anything else. Ted's charm, personality, and humor begin to win over Rebecca, the team, and those who had been skeptical about his appointment.
Many sports and television entertainment personalities appeared on the show, often appearing as themselves in cameo roles throughout the series:
Jason Sudeikis originally portrayed the title character in 2013 as part of a series of television commercials for NBC Sports promoting their coverage of the Premier League, in which Lasso is depicted as the new head coach of Tottenham Hotspur F.C.
In about 2015, Sudeikis's then-girlfriend Olivia Wilde suggested that he revisit the character, perhaps in a story in which Lasso found his career direction change. Whereas the original Lasso was more broadly comic, and as Sudeikis described him, "belligerent", he decided to make Lasso more sympathetic for the television series, explaining his reason for doing so in a May 2023 interview with The Guardian:
The series was commissioned in October 2019 by Apple TV+, with Sudeikis reprising the role. Television producer and Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence was brought in to work on a television series based around the character in 2017. The series is co-owned by Warner Bros. Television, where Lawrence's production company Doozer is based, and which controls linear distribution rights to the series, and NBC subsidiary Universal Television, which is a "passive partner".
On August 19, 2020, Apple TV+ renewed the series for a 10-episode second season. It was later confirmed that the second season had been expanded to 12 episodes. On October 28, 2020, the series was renewed for a third season. On an episode of the Scrubs rewatch podcast Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach + Donald, Lawrence indicated that Ted Lasso would likely be a "three-season show" due to Sudeikis's limited availability beyond the third season, and that the story had a planned resolution within those three seasons. In June 2022, Brett Goldstein also commented that the series would end after three seasons—"We are writing it like that." In March 2023, Sudeikis said that the third season "is the end of this story that we wanted to tell", and that there are possibilities for spin-offs. In an interview published in August 2023, Declan Lowney, who directed multiple episodes of the series, reiterated that the third season was "the end for now" and that it would be "two or three years [from filming the season] before anything happens — if anything happens".
In October 2021, Apple TV+ reached a licensing deal with the Premier League worth as much as £500,000 (around $682,000) for the series to feature the league's logos, kits, and trophy starting from the third season. On March 6, 2022, a day before filming for season 3 began, Nike, Inc. posted on its official Twitter account a photo of its trademark Swoosh logo incorporated onto an AFC Richmond kit, implying that the show's production had reached a deal with the company to act as the fictional club's "official" kit manufacturer on future episodes.
Some sources have noted the many similarities between the character of Ted Lasso and Terry Smith, an American football head coach who became the first American to be the manager/head coach of a professional English soccer club. AppleMagazine.com (which is not affiliated with Apple Inc.) writes that the series "was actually inspired by the story of Terry Smith, an American gridiron football coach who took over the English association football team Chester City and subsequently installed himself as the first-team coach".
On March 14, 2025 Sudeikis confirmed that season four is in the early stages of production. Apple subsequently released a press release confirming this news.
Actors in the series Brett Goldstein and Brendan Hunt also joined the writing team along with Sudeikis as the second and third members of the main cast to do so. While Hunt and Sudeikis were part of both the cast and writing team from the start, Goldstein was initially a writer and story editor. It was only after a video audition of some Roy Kent scenes was sent to the showrunner, Bill Lawrence, that Goldstein was added to the cast.
The episodes "Carol of the Bells" and "Beard After Hours" were the two episodes developed when the second season was expanded by two episodes, fitting in to the continuity of the second season without affecting storylines of the written episodes.
In March 2025, Sudeikis said that scripts for a fourth season were being written and that "Ted’s coaching a women’s team."
Theo Park is the series's casting director. Nick Mohammed, who portrays Nate Shelley, originally auditioned for the role of Leslie Higgins, which in the end went to Jeremy Swift. Park pushed for Phil Dunster to play the role of Jamie Tartt, even though the character was originally supposed to be from Latin America and portrayed by Cristo Fernández. The character of Sam Obisanya was originally going to have been of Ghanaian heritage, but the character was changed after Toheeb Jimoh's casting. In March 2021, Sarah Niles was cast as Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, a sports psychologist for AFC Richmond in a main capacity for the second season. About Niles' casting, Park said that "It was really important with that role that [Niles] had a real sense of security and almost completely unflappable." Kiki May portrayed Nora, Sassy's teenaged daughter, in a recurring capacity during the second season. Casting for season three was set to begin near the end of 2021. Jodi Balfour was cast as Jack, a venture capitalist, in a recurring capacity for the third season in April 2022.
Production began on the second season in January 2021. In March 2021, Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddingham were spotted filming outside a pub in London. Filming wrapped for the second season on June 4, 2021. Filming for the third season was set to take place between January and June 2022. Most of the pub and street scenes have been shot in the actual London Borough of Richmond. AFC Richmond's training field and complex in which Rebecca's office is based is filmed at the SkyEX Community Stadium which is the home ground of Hayes & Yeading United F.C. who are a semi-professional club playing in England's seventh level of competitive football, whereas Nelson Road, the home stadium of Richmond, is actually Selhurst Park, a real-life Premier League stadium used by London club Crystal Palace F.C. Exterior shots of Craven Cottage, the home stadium of Fulham F.C. were used in season 1 to pass off as fellow Premier League ground Goodison Park when AFC Richmond played away at Everton. Wembley Stadium was used in season 2 to portray the FA Cup semi-final with Manchester City.
The show incorporates many real-life members of the British football and television entertainment community. This also includes using a number of genuine television shows which feature the actual presenters, sets and theme songs, including the Sky Sports programme Soccer Saturday. The daytime ITV show This Morning also features in season 2.
For the second season, assistant director Sophie Worger hired former professional player Kasali Casal to manage the football choreography. Casal enlisted a team of former professional players to play for the opposition teams facing AFC Richmond during game scenes, these included former Premier League and England internationals Lee Hendrie and Jay Bothroyd, as well as former Liverpool player Jermaine Pennant and Wolverhampton Wanderers defender George Elokobi.
Filming for the third season began on March 7, 2022. The series filmed on location in Amsterdam for the third season. With the emergence of Nate becoming West Ham United's head coach during season 3, the club's London Stadium was used for filming. Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea, was used for filming in the third season episode "4–5–1". The appearance sparked controversy amongst Chelsea supporters after the show's editing team modified a memorial banner for the late Chelsea player Ray Wilkins that was paid for by the club's supporters. The banner which reads "They don't make them like Ray anymore" was changed to read "Roy" to tie in with the storyline of Richmond coach Roy Kent returning to his old club. Owner Todd Boehly released a statement apologizing to fans and to Wilkins' family, claiming the deal with Apple was agreed before he had purchased the club.
During the third season, further Premier League stadiums including Manchester United's Old Trafford and Burnley's Turf Moor were briefly filmed for on-field action, while Dutch Eredivisie side AFC Ajax's Johan Cruyff Arena was used for on and off the field scenes at the beginning of the episode "Sunflowers". Later episodes in Season 3 also filmed at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium and Manchester City's City of Manchester Stadium.
In March 2021, Bill Lawrence revealed that official Ted Lasso merchandise would be for sale ahead of the season two premiere. The merchandise, including football jerseys, became available in June 2021.
In 2023, to coincide with the release of season 3, Nike released a full range of AFC Richmond merchandise including jerseys, hoodies, tracksuits, and practice shirts.
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 92% based on 74 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Warm and winsome, if not particularly hilarious, Ted Lasso fleshes out its promo premise with unrelenting optimism and a charming turn from Jason Sudeikis." Metacritic gave the first season a weighted average score of 71 out of 100 based on 21 reviews.
Kristen Baldwin of Entertainment Weekly gave the series an A− and wrote, "There's nothing groundbreaking about the way Ted Lasso's story beats play out, but the show—a mix of workplace antics, sentimental sports inspo, and soapy romance—is undeniably winning." Reviewing the series for Rolling Stone, Alan Sepinwall described the series as "extremely likable throughout, but it's more a hypothetical comedy than an actual one. There are long stretches where Juno Temple is the only actor even trying to sell what few jokes are in the scripts." and gave a rating of three out of five. Writing for The Guardian, Benjamin Lee gave it two out of five, describing it as "a show that isn't unwatchably bad but isn't really much of anything", and suggesting that some of its humor was "rooted in some questionable and uneasy stereotypes".
As the season went on, critical appreciation increased. After the eighth episode, Caroline Framke of Variety published a review with the headline "For Your Reconsideration: Ted Lasso". She went on to say, "Above all odds, Ted Lasso chipped away at my skepticism until there was none left—just like the character himself does to everyone he meets", adding, "At a time when just about everything feels catastrophic, there's something undeniably satisfying about spending some time with good people who are just trying to be the best they can, on and off the field." Keri Lumm of Paste said, after the airing of the penultimate episode, "Ted Lasso is the wholesome American hero we need", going on to say "... the landscape of television has felt kind of gloomy, so imagine my surprise when I turned on the TV to Ted Lasso and felt a swelling of a now unfamiliar emotion—hope". And after the finale aired, Lea Palmieri from Decider said: "Every step of the way, Ted Lasso proves to be comforting and entertaining and somehow both a distraction and a reminder that kindness is out there, not just on this fictional show, not just across the pond, but deep in the heart of America too."
The second season was met with critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 98% based on 124 reviews, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "As comforting as a buttery biscuit from a friend, Ted Lasso's sophomore season is a feel-good triumph that plays into the show's strengths while giving its supporting team more time on the pitch." Metacritic gave the second season a weighted average score of 85 out of 100 based on 35 reviews.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 81% based on 201 reviews, with an average rating of 7.45/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Ted Lasso's third and possibly final season takes time to find its footing, but patient viewers who believe will find that they appreciate Coach as much as ever." Metacritic gave the third season a weighted average score of 73 out of 100 based on 31 reviews.
Reception for the third season became progressively more mixed as it went on, with reviewers criticizing the extended episode runtimes, pacing, and characterization. A joint review published in Vulture described the third season as "bumbling", "tedious" and "discombobulated" compared to the first two, noting "a last-gap [sic] quality to these episodes and a hastiness to the storytelling that makes the show's internal world feel inexplicably small." The reviewers noted a decline across the season's various character arcs, which were said to "range from merely muddled to downright inexplicable", with particular criticism directed at Keeley and Nate's subplots. David Sims of The Atlantic felt the series had "devolv[ed] into ham-fisted, novelistic nonsense" in its pivot from its sitcom roots to a "prestige drama" in the third season. Sims lamented the hourlong episode runtimes, which he described as "a pure example of the excesses that can flourish on streaming television", and characterized the season overall as unfocused and lacking in conflict. Like Sims, Linda Holmes of NPR identified the season's separation of the cast as its primary weakness, suggesting that the series should "refocus on relationships" rather than give each character their own storyline. Jack King of GQ conversely felt the series had "markedly improved" in the third season, but found Sudeikis's "saccharine" lead character to be the "least interesting" part of the series.
The first season received 20 nominations at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, becoming the most nominated freshman comedy in Emmy Award history. It won 7 awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series and acting awards for Jason Sudeikis, Brett Goldstein and Hannah Waddingham; while Brendan Hunt, Nick Mohammed, Jeremy Swift and Juno Temple received nominations. Sudeikis also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series for 2020 and 2021.
The series won in the categories for Outstanding New Program, Outstanding Achievement in Comedy and Program of the Year at the 37th TCA Awards and also won for best Comedy Series and New Series at the 73rd Writers Guild of America Awards.
The second season received 20 nominations at the 74th Primetime Emmy Awards. It won four awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series, acting awards for Sudeikis and Goldstein, and a directing award for MJ Delaney. Several actors received nominations, including Toheeb Jimoh, Mohammed, Temple, Waddingham, Sarah Niles, James Lance, Sam Richardson and Harriet Walter.
The third season received 21 nominations at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards. It was nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series, Sudeikis for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, Phil Dunster and Goldstein for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, Temple and Waddingham for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, Becky Ann Baker, Sarah Niles and Harriet Walter for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, and the finale episode was nominated for both outstanding writing and directing. At the 75th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, Sam Richardson won for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.
Following the debut of the third season, the cast of Ted Lasso were invited by US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden to the White House to promote mental health and well-being, a theme that was featured in storylines during the second and third seasons of the show.
Ted Lasso became the most watched television series on Apple TV+. The first-season premiere episode became Apple TV+'s most watched premiere and it ranked 89th overall among other television series or shows measured across streaming platforms from November 1, 2019, to July 18, 2021. According to TV analytics provider TVision, Ted Lasso has been viewed by panel members 8.4 times as much as the average Apple TV+ original series or shows TVision has measured since Apple TV+ launched in November 2019.
Over the second-season premiere weekend, Apple TV+ expanded its number of new viewers by 50% week over week. Apple also announced the second season of Ted Lasso "increased its viewership by six times over season one". In 2021, the final episode of the second season ranked ninth place among all SVOD programs and fifth place in the SVOD originals category with 507 million minutes (MM) viewed.
In December 2021, Apple TV+ released Ted Lasso: The Missing Christmas Mustache, a four-minute claymation special.
In September 2022, it was announced that AFC Richmond and Nelson Road would appear in the video game FIFA 23. The team would be available in multiple online and offline modes, with players also able to select Ted Lasso to manage any team in the game, as well as have someone else manage the team.
Ted Lasso: The Richmond Way, a box-set containing seasons 1–3, was released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 30, 2024.