Binge-worthy: ‘Nicecore’ hero Ted Lasso still funny and sad in comedy series’ third season

Ted Lasso 3

Apple TV+, with new episodes released on Wednesday

3 stars

The Emmy-sweeping fish-out-of-water comedy – about an American college football coach managing an English soccer team – has always walked a tightrope between humour and melancholy.

And its third season, reportedly the last, ups the ante by throwing in an existential crisis for its hero, coach Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis), even though the show still seems to believe that niceness and folksy humour conquer all.

Here are three reasons to stream the new batch of 12 episodes.

1. Fresh challenges for “nicecore” hero

The season opens with the pundits agreeing that AFC Richmond, the underdog team Lasso manages, is headed for the bottom of the Premier League.

And he is wondering what he is still doing in London, especially given that it means being separated from his beloved son and estranged wife in the United States.

But in the first four episodes, Lasso is, once again, able to win over his critics through the sheer force of his good-hearted humour – epitomising the subgenre of movies and series that American film critic David Ehrlich dubs “nicecore”, which promote radical niceness and optimism.

2. Playing with stereotypes

Even though the show trades in plenty of stereotypes – the over-friendly American, the uptight Brit and the tacky, fake-tanned WAGs (wives and girlfriends of footballers) – it also delights in undermining them and creating fully dimensional people behind each.

And it often primes the audience to expect neat, happy conclusions to certain plotlines before pulling the rug out from under them, like when a half-time pep talk leads AFC Richmond’s players not to victory, but an unproductive spiral of rage.

3. Still funny – even when it is not

This is a full-spectrum comedy, spanning everything from verbal to physical humour and the satirical to the very broad.

And while some of its one-liners are brilliant, Sudeikis’ Lasso is a bottomless pit of dad jokes and bad puns.

These are sometimes written to be deliberately groan-worthy, but the show also gets away with bits that, quite frankly, fall flat.

Yet, it speaks to the goodwill generated by Lasso and the show’s aggressively upbeat worldview that it still manages to be funny in aggregate – even when it is being sad.