Ted Lasso goes beyond extra time with its fourth season, and we pay the penalty

Ted Lasso ★★★

Like football, a Ted Lasso season is a game of two halves. And as such, reviewing it at half-time is a perilous exercise. But having seen the first five episodes of season four – ostensibly the final season – that is precisely what I am going to do.

So, here’s the caveat: struggling teams can sometimes stage remarkable comebacks after the break. And for the sake of this once-beloved show, I hope that’s what happens here.

To milk this metaphor just a little longer, this season feels like a game stretched into extra time and inevitably on the way to the dreaded penalty shootout. It’s a long way from the beautiful game at its finest, and it’s absolutely not the way anyone wants it to end.

There was never supposed to be a season four; season three – which also started unpromisingly – ended well enough, with storylines tied up, and futures stretching ahead for each of the main characters. That there is a fourth outing suggests Apple turned up at the offices of executive producers Bill Lawrence, Jason Sudeikis and Jack Burditt with a truckload of cash, and said, “Give us something, anything”, and greed rendered them powerless to resist. As a business decision, it perhaps makes sense; as an exercise in maintaining the reputation of a once-loved show, it does not.

Season four opens with a close-up of a name tag on the front of a polo shirt. “Ted”, it reads, and below that, “assistant manager”. A demotion? Of sorts. The miracle-working Mr Lasso (Sudeikis) is working the cash register at a supermarket in Kansas City. He’s still got the perma-grin and the dumb moustache and the sunny attitude, and he’s still managing his troubled “players” with a combination of reverse psychology and homespun wisdom, but sport is the furthest thing from his mind. He’s come back to the States solely to be with his young son, Henry. Nothing is going to change that.

Which is, of course, the cue for his old buddies to rock up and try to lure him back, a massive change of plans that takes no time at all to realise. (Henry is eager for a change of scene, it happens; so is Ted’s ex-wife Michelle. If only real life were actually that simple.)

Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham) doesn’t want Ted back for AFC Richmond, which is now managed by Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), the emotionally constipated, growling tough-nut former captain of the side that Ted guided from second-tier strugglers to Premier League contenders. She wants him for the newly launched women’s team, the Lady Greyhounds.

When Ted arrives, he finds his old buddy Beard (Brendan Hunt) working as Roy’s offsider. However, he’s a shaggy-haired, bushy-bearded mess, thanks to the break-up of his always volatile relationship with the mercurial Jane (Phoebe Walsh), who has written and stars in a one-woman play about their messy affair. Somehow, though, he’s back at Ted’s side within the blink of an eye, despite the fact Ted already has an assistant coach.

Alice (Tanya Reynolds) is surly, uptight, rule-bound, ambitious; if you’re thinking, “Oh, so she’s just like Nathan (Nick Mohammed) in the other seasons”, you’d be right. And that’s illustrative of the weakness of this season.

Everything feels like fan service, and half-hearted at that. The gags are lazy, the characters have become tired collections of tics, the storylines are predictable. Oh, and the footballing action – never the strongest element of the show – is laughably lame. Given the main through line is about the battle to have women’s soccer taken seriously, you’d think they might have made a little more effort to show it at its best.

It’s six years since this show first arrived on the scene, and I suspect many of us have forgotten just how refreshing it was in the midst of COVID doom and gloom to have this paragon of optimism, kindness and can-do spirit lob into our lounge rooms. Ted arrived in England as a know-nothing coach, handed the job by a woman who wanted to destroy as payback the team she had won from her ex-husband in a divorce settlement, only to win her, the fans and us, the viewers, over.

It was just what the world needed. Barring an unlikely late bounce back after the break, this tired and rather cynical final outing is the exact opposite.

Ted Lasso (season four) is now streaming on Apple TV.

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