TV Review: Ted Lasso Season 1 (2020)

Ted Lasso Season 1 (2020) created by Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, and Bill Lawrence

Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) is hired from a Kansas college football team to be the head coach of AFC Richmond, a Premier League (European) football team in England. Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) had acquired the team through a divorce with her cheating husband Rupert (Anthony Head). He loved the team so she is trying to tank the team in revenge. Lasso knows nothing about soccer or England. His main strengths are his folksy optimism and genuine concern for other people, though most everyone (the owner, the players, the press, the fans, etc.) think he is an idiot and will be nothing but a problem. His positive attitude starts to win over people but the process is slow and a lot of schemes have already been in the works to ruin things before people get on his side. He brushes aside the negativity, persevering through many hard situations and seemingly fruitless gestures.

While the premise sounds very hokey, the show is surprisingly effective. The writing is very sharp with well-rounded characters and complicated relationships that constantly evolve. One player, Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), is a veteran who is getting past his prime. He's the captain of the team but has a lot of anger issues and a generally bad attitude. He is especially upset with young star player Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster), who knows how good he is and so egotistical that it hurts the rest of the team. His girlfriend Keeley (Juno Temple) becomes the source of a lot of complications, both romantic and personal. Everyone has an interesting blend of strengths and weaknesses--including Lasso, which is probably the key to the success of the series. While he comes off like a Pollyanna and a lot of his ideas work out in the end, not everything does and he has some deeper problems that come to the surface that make him a very human character. The cast is uniformly excellent and believable in their roles.

The show is a comedy but has lots of drama built into it. Viewers easily laugh at the simple wisdom and unassuming style of Lasso. As I wrote, he does initially seem like a moron but he is in fact very smart and knows how to manipulate people for their own good, which is sometimes also his own good and sometimes not. He takes the strategy he had for the college team, making the players the best men they can be on and off the field, and applies it to the professional league players, who are more set in their ways and more focused on victory than self-development (or even self-awareness). The drama is touching and the comedy is hilarious. The show works on so many levels, it is well worth watching.

Highly recommended.

This season was discussed on A Good Story is Hard to Find Podcast #288.