Wahoo for more premier league Lasso comedy
FOR coach Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), AFC Richmond’s immediate promotion back to the English Premier League is tinged with sadness.
The long, sometimes tense campaign came at a price – the loss of kit man turned assistant coach Nathan Shelley (Nick Mohammed), who has joined their fiercest London rivals – West Ham United.
Hailed as a wonder kid for his rapid rise through the ranks, his team are tipped for a top-four finish, while every newspaper, TV pundit and ‘‘middle-aged sports blogging loser writing in his mother’s basement’’ thinks Richmond will end up 20th – dead last.
Such predictions horrify owner Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), who responds by suggesting they should inject more firepower into the team. However, her seemingly unflappable American manager Lasso thinks the current squad are ‘‘gelling just fine’’.
As the opening day of the season approaches, Lasso senses his charges are ‘‘more distracted than a cat playing laser tag’’, so decides to take them on a field trip – to the London sewers.
Somewhat non-plussed about why they are learning ‘‘fun facts about the faeces factory’’, Richmond’s players’ ‘‘big day out’’ goes viral.
Now in its third – and possibly last – 12-part season, the Emmy Award-winning comedy has lost none of its shine, at least based on the initial evidence.
As a trans-Atlantic, fish-outof-water comedy it is still aces, as a workplace sitcom it’s characters are compelling and nuanced and observations smart, while as a football drama, it certainly keeps you enthralled.
Much of the show’s charm comes from its surprising warmth (perhaps we’re all just so used to the default setting of a programme like this being cynical) and the homespun homilies of Sudeikis’ perpetually upbeat Lasso.
It’s hard not to raise a smile as he waxes lyrical on rugby (‘‘What a game – it’s like American football and sumo wrestling gave birth to a baby with huge muscular thighs all caked in mud’’), or his own misconceptions about Britain (‘‘When I first came here, I thought Yorkshire pudding was a fancy name for dogshit’’).
Keeping the celebrity cameos to a minimum has also helped with the show’s integrity.
Although it might exist in some kind of parallel football universe to the real English football pyramid, Richmond now almost feels just as much a potential club as the real-life Ryan Reynolds’ co-owned Wrexham.
Central to the show’s continued success though, is its heart, and Lasso continues to have it in spades, especially with its leading man, who looks and behaves like ‘‘Ned Flanders doing cosplay as Ned Flanders’’.
This remains feel-good fantasy football and the most delightful and consistently funny television comedies since Modern Family.
Season 3 of Ted Lasso kicks off on Wednesday on Apple TV+, with new episodes dropping every Wednesday.