{"id":575402,"date":"2026-08-05T09:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T09:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/575402\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T09:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T09:42:09","slug":"ted-lasso-season-four-review-tvs-most-wholesome-football-comedy-is-back-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/575402\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Lasso season four review \u2013 TV\u2019s most wholesome football comedy is back | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having transported a flailing AFC Richmond to the upper echelons of the Premier League with his wholesome, folksy and highly simile-reliant management style, the finale of Ted Lasso\u2019s third season saw our titular coach return to the US to spend more time with his son in Kansas. At the time (2023), the general impression was that we were waving goodbye for good. But could this intensely American protagonist really do the most British thing of all and bow out at the height of his sitcom\u2019s popularity? Nope. Last year it was announced that its star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis<\/a> had caved to market forces and was reprising his colossally popular alter ego.<\/p>\n

It was the logical thing to do: the 11-time Emmy-winning show was the most-watched streaming original of 2023. Not that logic features heavily in this fourth season. Before we discover how Ted has been lured back to south-west London, we find out what he\u2019s been up to in the interim. Did he parlay his success into US soccer? Return triumphantly to college football? Sit back with his millions and rest on his laurels? Nope, nope and nope again. Instead, he\u2019s working in his local supermarket, warmly greeting his customers by name, providing moral guidance to younger colleagues and generally radiating his trademark howdily-doodily energy. Why? Because he\u2019s a good man without ego who loves to connect and make a positive difference in his community! This is Ted Lasso we\u2019re talking about!<\/p>\n

Back to the central head-scratcher. Ted left the UK at the top of his game, ultimately choosing fatherhood over riches, professional triumph and beloved colleagues. What could possibly change his mind? Richmond\u2019s owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham, as aspirationally imperious as ever), her deputy Higgins (Jeremy Swift, as satisfyingly square as ever) and marketing manager Keeley (Juno Temple, as unsettlingly childlike as ever) think they\u2019ve cracked it: they fly to Kansas to offer him the job of managing the women\u2019s team, who are languishing in the second division. Obviously, Ted declines. But then his mother \u2013 the same mother who last season convinced him to come home \u2013 encourages him to go back. So he asks his son and his estranged wife if they fancy coming with. With little explanation, they agree.<\/p>\n

If you are already a Ted Lasso ultra, you may be inclined to gloss over the twee nonsensicality of this fourth season\u2019s setup and simply sink back into the show\u2019s anodyne atmosphere, one that revolves around messages of positivity, togetherness and how good it is when your football team wins. If you bristle at such blatant emotional button-pushing, you might come to another conclusion: Ted Lasso is fake and phoney, to use the kind of Americanism this show loves putting into the mouths of its British characters (who calls it \u201cthe John Lewis Christmas commercial\u201d?!). From the vague transatlanticism and fairytale London to the football-based inaccuracies and stiffly unreal vibe, Ted Lasso rarely bears any relation to reality. This is not a show for pedants.<\/p>\n

That said, the shift in focus to women\u2019s football does at least mean entertaining some hard truths. Ted\u2019s new assistant coach Alice Chilton (Sex Education\u2019s Tanya Reynolds<\/a>) is a dour taskmaster furious at having been passed over for the top job in favour of a man. And although Ted quickly gets to work in his signature style \u2013 improving morale by drilling down into the players\u2019 psyches \u2013 his efforts are hampered by the chronic lack of investment in women\u2019s sport, plus injury, pregnancy, motherhood and the fact he\u2019s barely allowed inside the changing room for propriety\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n

Still, in the four episodes made available to reviewers, the tension never properly builds. Ted sees the care and industriousness behind Alice\u2019s stony-faced exterior, which is destined to crack imminently. Rather than establishing the new team as individuals (beyond one hard-as-nails goalie and two squabbling Irish sisters), the show often falls back on comfortingly familiar dynamics: the will-they-won\u2019t-they between Roy Kent, still manager of the men\u2019s team, and his ex Keeley among them.<\/p>\n

For all its irritatingly ersatz qualities, the appeal of Ted Lasso is as clear as ever: the signposted comic beats, the predictable gestures towards kindness and reconciliation, the bright colours, the clean lines. A sense of quality entertainment still hangs about the whole well-oiled endeavour. Think of it as the TV equivalent of Taylor Swift: ruthlessly efficient, reassuringly dorky, blatantly basic and as monocultural as any Apple TV offering is going to get. While I suspect season four will shed some viewers \u2013 primarily those who prefer the glamour of the men\u2019s game over the more injustice-focused angle any show about women\u2019s sport must take \u2013 fans will be relieved to hear the show has by no means embraced gritty naturalism. Ted Lasso is still saccharine business as usual and, no doubt, still a lot of people\u2019s cup of tea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having transported a flailing AFC Richmond to the upper echelons of the Premier League with his wholesome, folksy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-575402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}