Record-breaking UK-US "soccer" comedy Ted Lasso gets third season on Apple
The series about the hopeless US coach plunged into the Premier League has been a hit for AppleTV+.
The fish-out-of-water trans-Atlantic football comedy series Ted Lasso has been commissioned for a third season by AppleTV+ after breaking records for the streaming network around the world.
Ted Lasso stars former Saturday Night Live comedian Jason Sudeikis as the "soccer" coach of the title, who is catapulted from college-level football in the US to coach a fictional Premier League team in the UK, AFC Richmond.
The premise around which the series revolves is that hapless Ted knows zilch about football.
Boston Globe critic Matthew Gilbert said of season one: "Turns out, it's a sweetly cheerful comedy, and the Ted Lasso character, a dumb-American buffoon in the ads, has been made into a big-hearted, optimistic, even charming guy."
Watch the trailer for season one:
The Hollywood Reporter says production on the second season of Ted Lasso would resume in London in January and the announcement of a third season by AppleTV+ was indicative of the immense success the comedy has had globally.
Created by Sudeikis and Scrubs showrunner Bill Lawrence, Ted Lasso has drawn 25 per cent new viewers to AppleTV+, while also ranking as the network's top comedy in 50 countries, including the UK, the US, Germany, France, Russia and Japan.
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Lawrence told The Hollywood Reporter podcast TV's Top 5 that Ted Lasso would now write the COVID-19 pandemic into its scripts when it returns, preferring to offer viewers a chance to forget it.
He said: "When we shot it the first time, this wasn't on our radar. If [COVID-19] is still a day-to-day issue when a second season would come out … people are going to want escapist entertainment. … Half-empty stadiums with Zoom crowds? It's too weird to even be writing."
Reflecting the storyline, Ted Lasso boasts a trans-Atlantic cast, including Sex Education and Game of Thrones star Hannah Waddingham, Humans and Save Me actor Phil Dunster and Nick Mohammed, who recently created co-starred in the Sky One comedy Intelligence, alongside David Schwimmer.
It's not clear when season two of Ted Lasso will screen on AppleTV+.
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