Everybody who has seen Ted Lasso, loves Ted Lasso.
Mind you, if you’d told Jason Sudeikis, a veteran of more than 174 episodes of Saturday Night Live (opens in new tab), that when he signed up to do a series of commercials for NBC Sports promoting their new and expensively acquired coverage of the Premier League (opens in new tab), that it would go to become his biggest role to date, he’d likely have laughed at you.
The initial commercials put Lasso, a college football coach, who is asked to take charge of Premier League heavyweights, before being unceremoniously dumped before the season started. The commercials were a hit and were shared all over the world, Sudeikis was asked about the character in interviews, and, in 2017, he and Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence started working on fleshing the character out into something bigger.
Something bigger arrived on Apple TV Plus (opens in new tab) in 2020 when the show’s first season debuted in August of that year. This time, Lasso had been hired to coach the fictional AFC Richmond in an attempt by its owner to spite her ex-husband, a life-long fan of the club. After waves of criticism from the media, the club's fans and the players, Lasso quickly starts to win people around with his relentless enthusiasm and inability to ever countenance giving up.
The show has been a giant success for Apple, it has made stars of Sudeikis’ supporting cast Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Hannah Waddington and Nick Mohammed, and won countless awards. After the reception for the show’s first season, Apple quickly commissioned a second season, and then a third, which looks set to be the show's final run. Filming on that way is underway now.
If you’ve not seen Ted Lasso, you should correct that at the earliest opportunity, it’s clever, funny and so very big-hearted, with a real emotional gut punch thrown just when you’re least expecting it. But, if you’ve seen the first two seasons and you’re waiting for the third, we’re here to help with that.
To tide you over to the return of Ted and his rag-tag gang of players, we thought we’d recommend six big-hearted comedies to keep you going until then…
Parks and Recreation
One of the finest comedies of the last 20 years, if you’ve not seen Parks and Recreation then you need to make sure that you do.
In this show, we find ourselves in Pawnee, a fictional city in Indiana, inside the Parks and Recreation Department where Leslie Knope, a mid-level bureaucrat, is desperately trying to convince her team of apathetic, lazy and distracted staff to help improve the city’s fading public realm in the face of an incompetent local administration.
We’re a long way from the soccer fields here, but Amy Poehler’s Knope has the same relentless enthusiasm and will to succeed as Sudeikis’ Lasso and is easy to fall in love with.
Like Lasso, it’s also packed with brilliant supporting characters, like Nick Offerman’s belligerent Ron Swanson, Chris Pratt’s affable goof Andy Dwyer and Aubrey Plaza’s eccentric April Ludgate.
Where Can I Stream It?
Netflix (UK), Now (UK), Peacock (US)
GLOW
GLOW, or the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling to use its full title, was cruelly cut down in its prime by Netflix (opens in new tab), but there are still three wonderful seasons to get stuck into.
Set in Los Angeles in 1985, the show follows Alison Brie’s Ruth Wilder, an actress whose career is not going the way she wants and needs to make money. With that in mind, she auditions for a fledgling professional wrestling promotion called the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.
Accepted into the squad, Wilder has to adjust her idealistic acting goals as she learns to work alongside GLOW's director Sam Sylvia and how wrestling audiences and theater-goers are rather different…
Much like Sudeikis in Ted Lasso, GLOW is built around Alison Brie, but it actually has a great ensemble cast and showcases the joy of camaraderie among friends and the strength of collective endeavor. It also has a giant heart and a great soundtrack.
Where Can I Stream It?
Netflix (Worldwide)
Shoresy
One of the surprise critical hits of the year, this spin-off from long-running Canadian sitcom Letterkenny is a classic Lasso underdog story.
The show follows the titular character, who moves to the small Canadian town of Sudbury to take a role with a struggling Triple A-level ice hockey team, the Sudbury Bulldogs.
After losing 20 straight games and coming bottom of the league, the team is about to be shut down until Shoresy decides to make a bet that the team will never lose again if he's given a chance to take control. Then everything changes.
Like Ted, it's a tale of losers becoming heroes, moving from laughing stock to champions, perfect if you're pining for some Lasso.
Where Can I Stream It?
Hulu (US)
Big Shot
Big Shot was not one of Disney Plus (opens in new tab)’s splashier releases when it debuted last summer, but it did well enough to earn a second season and everyone who has seen it has come away raving about it.
With a creative team that includes Big Little Lies creator David E. Kelley, the show stars Fuller House and ER veteran John Stamos. Stamos plays Marvyn Korn, a decorated but fiery basketball coach who is fired from his job at the University at Wisconsin and relocates to California to coach a girls’ basketball team at Westbrook School, an elite high school for girls.
Initially, the team doesn't warm to Korn’s intensity, but in time he wins them round, and, as is the tendency within sporting dramas, everyone ends up winners.
It’s a story you’ve seen before, but it’s one told with real conviction and pushes all the right buttons when Korn’s plan finally comes together.
Where Can I Stream It?
Disney Plus (Worldwide)
Ballers
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson has spent the lion’s share of his acting career on the big screen, but his five-season-run as the leading man of this HBO Max (opens in new tab)comedy-drama is well worth revisiting.
Johnson plays Spencer Strasmore, a former American football star who now works as a financial manager for players. Ballers follows him through the daily grind, as he manages an array of giant egos and plots his way to the top of the game.
Over the show’s five-season-run, the likes of John David Washington, Russell Brand, Dule Hill and Donovan W. Carter have all played well-received supporting roles, all bouncing off Johnson superbly.
Ballers has a slight Entourage feel to it, a peek behind the curtain into how NFL works, but it’s slick, funny and with a half-hour runtime, very easily digestible. Unlike Ted Lasso, Johnson’s Strasmore is always at the top of his game, but it’s just as fun watching him work.
Where Can I Stream It?
HBO Max (US), NOW (UK)
Cobra Kai
The TV spin-off to The Karate Kid started its life as a YouTube original, but Netflix snapped it up after season three and have turned it into a smash hit.
Set 34 years after William Zabka's Johnny Lawrence was defeated by Ralph Macchio's Danny LaRusso, Lawrence decides to open the Cobra Kai dojo once more to teach a new generation of kids how to fight. Out of this, old rivalries soon return...
Scrappy, nostalgic for sure, but delivered with such conviction, this is a great watch, whether you've seen The Karate Kid or not. A fifth season arrives in September. (opens in new tab)
Where Can I Stream It?
Netflix (Worldwide)
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