The first episode of the fourth season of Ted Lasso was the most-watched premiere in the history of Apple TV.
The comedy series about an American football coach hired to work in England initially ran for three seasons on the streaming service, before being revived this month. The new season follows Lasso as he returns to coach a women’s team.
The show has divided critics, with The Independent’s Nick Hilton handing it a withering two-star review.
However, it has proved a record-breaking hit with viewers. Deadline reports that according to Nielsen data, the show’s fourth season premiere was watched for 296.6 million minutes in the United States across August 4 and 5.
That made it the most-streamed show in the country on August 5, recording more than 200 million viewing minutes.
The new season sees Jason Sudeikis as Lasso, joined by a returning cast including Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt and Jeremy Swift.
Newcomers to the cast include Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely.
The show originally debuted in 2020 and was nominated for 20 Emmy Awards, the most nods ever received by a first-season comedy. It won Outstanding Comedy Series, with Sudeikis taking home the Best Actor in a Comedy Series accolade, while Goldstein, who plays captain-turned-assistant-manager Roy Kent, won in the supporting actor category.
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In his review of the new season for The Independent, Hilton compared the Ted Lasso revival to the Toy Story franchise.
“Toy Story 5 came out a few weeks ago and, with time to kill, I found myself going back and watching the previous four instalments in anticipation,” wrote the critic. “The first three constitute a perfect trilogy, with an ending filled with pathos and closure. And then, for some reason (answer: money) they made two more, middling additions. The same sense of gratuitous protraction is present in this reset of the Lasso universe.”
He concludes: “Americans don’t truly understand football, sure, but they do understand narrative storytelling. Ted Lasso is an all-American sporting hero in the mould of Rocky Balboa or Air Bud. The show was about bringing some of that touchy-feely shmaltz and exposing it to the rough winds of Premier League football. Can you be an eternal optimist on a cold, rainy night in Stoke? Having answered that question, the show has nowhere to go but limp on like an ageing striker whose powers are fading before their eyes.”