I thought you were allergic to horseradish? No - horses and radishes.

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021.  

#14 : Ted Lasso

What else is there to say about Ted Lasso? Its achievements are already numerous – it’s funny, warm-hearted, wildly celebrated and it made people actually want to watch Apple TV+ – and yet you sense that more is to come. The first season was an unexpectedly sweet fish out of water comedy, the second dug a little deeper into the compulsions of its characters. What on Earth will a third do? Initiate world peace?

I've heard a lot of nice things about this, so am looking forward to watching it - and honoured it by decided to start at the beginning (apparently season 1 is more instant, but season 2 gets to you given time).  I also started it whilst I had the previous two entries still on the go because I was hoping for something a little more light-hearted and a little less full-on racist.

And I'm pleased to say Ted Lasso delivers on both fronts - that's lucky, eh?!  It actually does feature more racism than you might expect, but it's used to show how ridiculous it is more than anything else so it's not quite in the same league as our previous two visits.  

The first season is basically an utterly charming fish-out-of-water comedy using the power of niceness to take on all-comers.  It's also about listening to others and finding wisdom in the most unlikely of places.  You don't need to know anything about football and there's probably an argument that not knowing about it improves the whole experience.  It's also great to have a major character who speaks about ten words an episode.

And the second season does seem like they felt the need to go somewhere else - at first glance, it has the same general lightweight tone but takes opportunities to delve deeper into things by giving some of the characters issues to deal with or explaining issues which drive the characters.  It does reduce the laughs but it gets away with it because of all the credit it built up in season one - you care about these characters so you are intrigued as to where they're going with it.   However, I would say that the character that undergoes the biggest arc in the season seems to have the least reason for it, which I did find unsatisfactory but it's left me wondering if they're going to explain it in the next season (which I'll definitely be watching).  Another area of mild confusion/dissatisfaction were the three slightly odd "X days/months later" scenes which end the season - I'm not entirely sure what the first two were supposed to signify and the last one was undoubtedly supposed to be a big reveal but had been signposted a mile off.

The Xmas episode with its different titles is really cute and it's a nice seasonal episode - if possible slightly too cutesy.  Another episode with different titles is the one in which they give Brett Goldstein as Coach Beard a chance to shine (along with three other minor characters) and he even gets to say some words (and that's not even close to the strangest thing that happens in the episode).  It also features the best feelgood scene set in a nightclub since Spaced's Epiphanies (you know, the one with the A Team theme - which was a mere 23 years ago now!).  The other scene I have to call out in this season is the women playing 20 questions at the funeral which made me cry with laughter, but it doesn't half take a dark turn very quickly afterwards - and end up in a most unlikely Rick-rolling.  Twice!

But the best episode for me is the one where two characters meet on their blind date which is just done perfectly and plays nicely against two other characters letting their guards down and starting to meet in the middle (which continues nicely across the rest of the season).  And, on top of all that, the team play a big match as well.  However, I don't want to give any spoilers here and hence there's not really an awful lot I can say about it, unfortunately.

The entire second season has an interesting theme of fatherhood running throughout it which makes some very interesting points - basically parenting is hard, bro! (but hard in many different ways).  It also has an interesting underlying theme of drinking which is often present, but never addressed, so I'm also interested to see where that might go in the next season.  

So, it's well-written (with surprising depth), it's funny and it's also well acted across the board - it feels harsh to call out specific names, but we have to start with Jason Sudeikis who does a great job throughout in deploying homespun wisdom with a smile - and he's obviously a thoroughly decent guy as well.  The other main characters all gel well around him - Hannah Waddingham and Juno Temple provide some charming female support (both nicely subverting stereotypes) and Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Nick Mohammed and Jeremy Swift provide various different aspects of masculine support (only sometimes subverting stereotypes!).  In 2021, Ted Lasso received a load of award nominations, but the most impressive were the Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series, with those four members of the cast being up for it. Brett Goldstein won the thing, which feels right to me - as does Jason and Hannah getting their Emmys as well in their categories.

I'm also going to namecheck Elodie Blomfield as Phoebe, who is a perfectly charming child actor and works really well with the adult actors, particularly Brett Goldstein as Uncle Roy.  Additionally, Sarah Niles is a decent addition as a sports psychologist for season 2 although I do feel she could have been used more consistently through the season.  And one final point is that I was trying to remember where I knew Annette Badland (who plays Mae, the pub landlady) from - scrolling waaaay back through IMDB tells me it was from Bergerac, a loooong time ago now.

One thing I should probably mention is that whilst the humour is generally quite gentle, the language most certainly isn't - particularly not from Roy "Fucking" Kent.  It's in character, but it's also very frequent and almost entirely gratuitous, so you may decide not to watch it with your parents (the kids will get over it though, because they know that, as Roy puts it "if you want to be a fucking lawyer or a fucking doctor, you can't fucking swear").

One final point I'd make is that it makes excellent use of songs - they're generally pretty well know so they spent some money there (there's a Rolling Stones number even!) but they fit in really well with the plot and often quite subtly as well.  It's just another sign that the whole thing has been well thought out - even the smallest details.

Overall, I thoroughly recommend it - the second season is indeed different to the first and I have more quibbles with it, but there's a definite argument that it addresses "real life" (in its own way) more and hence some quibbles are to be expected.  The one thing I would say is that you mustn't start with season two - do yourself a favour and invest that time, you won't regret it.

#13 - Beautiful, but not for me
#15 - Much more enjoyable than I was expecting