Rubbish jokes, inept plotting, a weak script … should we go on? This messy, boring, endurance test of a show got way bigger than it ever deserved – thank goodness its final episode is here
They say bad things come in threes and this week television delivered, with the end of two excellent shows – Succession, Barry – and a 76-minute episode of Ted Lasso. Today, it’s the finale of the Apple TV show that began 10 years ago as a series of US commercials for Premier League football. It was developed into a perfectly average comedy about an American coach taking on a failing English football team, and steadily became as messy and saccharine as treacle. The end of Ted Lasso has been a long time coming, and I’m not talking about the ridiculous running time.
When it started in 2020, everyone agreed: Ted Lasso was nice. It was the least surprising “surprise” hit of the pandemic; the sweet show about a rube with a charming moustache and a head full of aphorisms, who didn’t know how to drink sparkling water or if Wales was a country, said fun things like “fellas!” and “holy smokes!”, and arrived right on time to save us from the terrifying tedium of lockdowns. It was, as one headline put it, “a warm hug of nice”.
