Ted Lasso: I tried to resist, but this comedy has perfected a rare Friends-like TV magic

I have a complicated relationship with Ted Lasso (Apple TV+), which returns on 15 March for its third season (and possibly final, though why they would bring an end to a popular show that is saying as little as humanly possible seems beyond me. There’s no ring going to Mordor, is there? He just keeps slapping a “BELIEVE” sign and saying words that rhyme).

The first season was an unexpectedly warming hit: a spin-off show for a character invented for an advert whose primary personality trait was “American” could have run out of steam as soon as Ted encountered his first cup of tea, so writers skirted round that central thinness by filling the rest of the cast and story with tons and tons of heart.

Season two was, comparatively, a whiff, one that over-relied on the audience’s accrued fondness for the existing players and stretched out to 14 episodes for no reason (the Christmas episode! The episode where coach goes to the club! Garbage!). This is all fine.

But, fundamentally, I bristle against Ted Lasso’s central engine and the place it holds culturally right now – it’s the co-reigning “nice” comedy with Abbott Elementary, following in the hallowed tradition of The Office (US), Parks and Recreation and The Good Place – which I personally find jeopardyless and affected. I just hate it when a comedy asks “What if everyone was friends and sometimes kissed?”. This is, I’ll concede, because I am an extremely negative person.

And yet, here I am, still reeling from chain-watching the three preview episodes provided to me and champing deliriously for more. I’ll sketch out the story points, even though they are essentially irrelevant: AFC Richmond just got promoted to the Premier League, and have the Nike kits to prove it. Former kitman Nate “The Great” Shelley is now the manager of arch rivals West Ham. (To better appreciate Ted Lasso, I’ve found, is to forget everything you know about football.) Ted still clenches his fist sometimes. The team are all still friends and then sometimes not friends. Juno Temple is still doing that voice. Nothing matters and the crowds are made from computers. The show is still convinced that the cutest thing in the world is “a child saying something”. I want to hate it so much.

But. There’s something happening here, some rare TV magic: it has clicked into a phenomenally composed cruising gear, the same one they were in for the entirety of Friends. Everyone knows the exact personality of every character: what they would do, what they wouldn’t do, what would make them sad and what would make them scared. There’s a good-enough one-liner in every scene. This show has a curiously delightful line in characters “knowing” something – everyone’s always starting a conversation with a fun animal fact, or something – and all the relationships make sense. Even Paul Merson’s acting performances have softened and become more normal from the Sky Sports studio.

Basically, every component part works and the show is purring as a result. The actual character of Ted is fairly tertiary to all this. The show could feasibly do another 10 seasons without him.

I suppose – heh – I suppose what has happened here is I have been Ted Lasso’d. You remember how season one started, didn’t you? Rebecca only installed Ted as the coach to bring the whole club down to spite her ex-husband. She wanted to hate him and for much of the first series was very successful in doing that. But eventually – and because of Ted’s three qualities: charisma, persistence and niceness – he won her over, and the players over, and the fans.

And, dammit, me. I wanted to be cynical about this. I wanted to put nice comedy in cryo-storage for another hundred years. I don’t need to see a single scene where someone wins a bar game while telling a folksy story about trusting people. I do not ever again need to watch an adult explain a semi-complicated concept to a child and get flustered in doing so. I never need to see a grumpy character who doesn’t like touching finally relenting and accepting a hug. And yet here I am. Come on Richmond! Do one over on that evil West Ham!