Why Ted Lasso Is One of the Best Shows of 2020
How an NBC promo from 2013 became one of the best shows of 2020
We’ve all seen shows with a massive amount of potential crash and burn after their debut. Most of the time it’s because they fell short of the hype, looking at you Game of Thrones Season 8. However, Ted Lasso exemplifies a different case. By all appearances, Ted Lasso seemed like a show facing an uphill battle. It started with an NBC promo video and ended up on Apple TV+ somehow. However, it exceeded my expectations, as well as many others. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I remember seeing the NBC promo Jason Sudeikis did as a promo. I could never have imagined that this show would become one of my favorites.
The Backstory
After acquiring the rights to broadcast the Premier League in England in 2013, NBC Sports decided to advertise in a rather revolutionary way. Since they already owned Saturday Night Live, it was easy to cast a top-tier comedic actor. This is where Jason Sudeikis came into the picture. He starred in the promo as Ted Lasso, a goofy American football coach who was recruited to coach a soccer team in England — the Tottenham Hotspur. Lasso said it best, “Football’s football no matter where you play it." Eventually, he is fired from the team at the end of the video, which is not a surprise.
The goal was to draw the attention of the Premier League’s current soccer fans as well as hopefully bring in new viewers. The strategy paid off and the videos received millions of views on Youtube. So NBC decided to produce another series of promos, where Lasso has moved on to broadcasting. Yet again he is fired for his complete lack of soccer knowledge or even the basic rules. Towards the end of the video, he’s back in America and is relegated to coaching a youth soccer team — the St. Catherine Fighting Owls. The bold marketing strategy from NBC generated over 20 million views on Youtube. I would recommend watching these promos as the contrast between them and the show is what makes the latter so great.
Birth of the Show
We didn’t hear much from Ted Lasso after the debut of the promos. That didn‘t mean that the character wasn’t on Jason Sudeikis’s mind. He talked to Sports Illustrated about the inspiration behind turning the character into a full show. Sudeikis said, “After doing the second video (in 2014), it really unlocked elements of the character that we found very, very fun to write and portray and view the world through. So, one day in 2015, my partner Olivia (the actress and filmmaker Olivia Wilde) came up to me one day and said, ‘You know, you should do Ted Lasso as a show,’ and I said, ‘I don’t know,’ but then after marinating on it, I thought maybe this could happen.” So in 2015, he began writing the pilot for the show alongside his writing partners, Joe Kelly and Brendan Hunt. They quickly figured out the pilot and the following episodes, outlining somewhere between 6 to 10 episodes. However, it wouldn’t be until 2017 that the show really took its shape after Sudeikis convinced Bill Lawrence to join as a co-creator, the creator of Cougar Town and Scrubs. They decided to make Ted Lasso more dynamic than goofy and this gave the audience a character they could route for and support. Their vision came to fruition and in 2020 Ted Lasso premiered on Apple TV+.
Ted Lasso — Review — Apple TV+
It was necessary to start with the original version of the character in order to contrast it with the show's version. In the original promo, Lasso is displayed as a bumbling American. He, like most of us, does not have the first clue how soccer actually works. While Lasso is still clueless at some points in the show, he has an intangible quality that makes you want him to win. I think this is because they focus more on the optimism and comradery he brings to the team. When Lasso first arrives to meet his players, who play for a made-up team called AFC Richmond, they are in bad shape. When they’re not losing games on the field, they are ghosting each other in the locker room. There is little to no bond amongst the teammates or team staff. Clearly, Lasso has his work cut out for him. Lasso rises to the occasion during the team's darkest hours. His optimism is fierce and persistent, despite their best efforts to oppose him. The rise from the ashes is what gives Lasso’s character his appeal. He is unwavering in his efforts to bring this team together, no matter the result of the game. Usually, people find overly optimistic people annoying or overbearing. Which made me wonder why everyone, myself included, likes this character so much?
My theory is that Lasso is a refreshing brand of optimism. We all get bogged down with the daily troubles of our lives and this negatively affects our moods. Whereas Lasso appears to glide over these troubles with a happy attitude. I think that’s how we all aspire to handle ourselves but can never seem to beat down the negativity. In this quality lies Lasso’s appeal to the masses. We aspire to be like Lasso and have an attitude towards life as he does. This is what the writers envisioned when they were first drawing out the TV show version of the character. They wanted to create a character that people aspired to be. In my opinion, they hit the nail on the head. Watching this show is just a happy experience and you leave every episode feeling lighter. Personally, I just can’t get enough of the Lasso energy.
The success of the show is clear with both the audience and Apple. If you need proof, they’ve already green-lit two more seasons of the show. Meaning we can probably expect at least 20 episodes or more in the years to come. I highly recommend that you watch it on Apple TV+!
