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Season 4 introduces a premise that gives Jason Sudeikis’ titular American-football-turned-British-football coach a chance at both a fresh start and a return to old stomping grounds. Two years after Ted walked away from AFC Richmond and took his signature mustache back to Kansas City, team owner Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), marketing chief Keeley (Juno Temple) and operations head Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift) arrive stateside with an offer he can’t refuse: coaching the club’s brand-new women’s team, who begin their existence as the underdogs — specifically, Greyhounds — their male counterparts once were. Given the cultural bias against women’s sports leagues, they’ll likely remain so even if they succeed.

The concepts of class reunion (Ted goes back to London and gets the gang back together!) and clean slate (Ted takes on a new challenge!) are somewhat at odds. Sure enough, Season 4 is far more enjoyable as the latter than the former — even as “Ted Lasso” keeps privileging nostalgia and tired subplots over its best chance at a renaissance. Tanya Reynolds of “Sex Education” is a welcome addition as Alice Chilton, a coach whose constant scowl and clipped severity make her a well-suited foil for Ted’s sunny optimism until she inevitably warms to it. But, at least in the five episodes provided to critics out of an eventual 10, she’s pretty much the only new character who feels fully established, because “Ted Lasso” refuses to make room in the ensemble by sidelining (or is it touchlining?) old ones.

Like Sudeikis, actor Brett Goldstein remains a creative force behind the camera, which may explain why his churlish then player, now coach Roy Kent remains such a presence despite the pivot away from his men’s squad. But while foregrounding Rebecca and Keeley makes sense given the renewed focus on women in sports, Roy and Keeley’s on-again, off-again romance lost its allure several seasons ago. Figures like Roy and Ted’s longtime deputy Beard (series co-creator Brendan Hunt) would be better deployed as occasional cameos, yet they remain load-bearing — and space-occupying — protagonists. The consequences can border on the absurd: a major decision by Ted’s ex-wife Michelle (Andrea Anders) is sped through rather than shown from her perspective; an episode hinges on a team problem with cliques that’s only depicted onscreen far too late. Until then, we’re mostly told about it by other characters with longer tenures.

Contributing to the sense of overcrowding is an otherwise welcome development: no single episode of the first five clocks in at over an hour, the way so much of Season 3 did. “Ted Lasso” is not for everyone; the blindingly earnest social consciousness and relentless positivity some find so grating remain firmly in place. (Feminist commentary was never the series’ strong suit, and centering the women’s team prompts more of it than ever.) But Season 4 reigns in some excesses and offers glimpses of fresh new faces: a walk-on player who’s also a single mom; a goalie who refuses to wear gloves; a new mentor for Rebecca, played by comic legend Tracey Ullmann. If only the show would clear the field for them. %!s()

Three years after a Season 3 finale that sure did feel like a series finale at the time, Ted Lasso is back for a fourth season after all. In the modern streaming world, it’s become far too typical for a three-year gap between seasons to become something of a norm. At least Ted Lasso is accounting for this prolonged break in a bigger way, with a semi-reboot approach that feels more akin to a show being revived 10-15 years later rather than one we last saw the same year Oppenheimer was in movie theaters.

The third season ended with Ted (Jason Sudeikis) returning home to America and realizing it was time to stop being the semi-deadbeat dad he’d become, given his young son was back in Kansas City while Ted had been overseas coaching AFC Richmond. Season 4’s premiere is notable, because it’s actually entirely set in Kansas City. Ted is surprised when Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), Leslie (Jeremy Swift), and Keeley (Juno Temple) show up on his doorstep, hoping to recruit him to return to London to coach the new AFC Richmond women’s division team.

The premiere was shot on location in Kansas City, giving it a markedly different visual landscape than your typical Ted Lasso episode, and it makes the most of it. And there’s plenty of comic mileage drawn from making Rebecca, Leslie, and Keeley the fish out of water for once, as they take in these new sights and sounds. The cast all slip very comfortably back into their characters, whether it be the sweet and funny sisterly connection Waddingham and Temple exude, or the lovably dorky demeanor of Swift’s Leslie.

As for the title character, series co-creator and EP Sudeikis still wears the smile and stache of Ted like he was born for it. Ted’s gotten through the mental health issues that plagued him early on, but we find him at a restless point of his life, working as an assistant manager at a supermarket. He’s still maintaining his usual sunny disposition, but clearly without a true sense of fulfillment. Of course, there’s not a lot of dramatic tension as to whether he’ll accept the offer to coach again — there’s a whole season’s worth of episodes to fill, and we’ve seen the trailers — but the premiere does a solid job of showing how Ted gets to the point where he can admit that’s what he wants to do.

Pushing things on the credibility side though is how the premiere deals with the fact that Ted not only wouldn’t want to leave his son Henry (now played by Grant Feely) again, but wouldn’t want to ask to separate Henry from his mother, Ted’s ex-wife Michelle (Andrea Anders). The solution feels far too easy and convenient, awkwardly handwaving what would likely be a very difficult conversation in real life.

Given the nature of the premiere and how focused it is — no other series regulars appear beyond the four mentioned above, and we never actually see London — it’s hard to be sure how much it will reflect the remainder of the season. But the approach it takes is promising as far as its willingness to lock in on just a few characters and interconnected situations.

While Ted Lasso never lost its kindhearted center, Season 3 was notably overindulgent and often felt lacking in form after EP/co-creator Bill Lawrence stepped back as showrunner. This was demonstrated by its incredibly overlong episode runtimes, which frequently hit a full hour or more in the midst of a show that began with half-hour installments. The amount of subplots and side stories got out of control to the point that we somehow were following the inner workings of two different restaurants at one point on a series that was meant to be about a soccer team.

The premiere does give hope that Sudeikis and new co-showrunner Jack Burditt have learned that less can be more. “

As we prep to meet AFC Richmond's women's team, it’s definitely going to be odd adjusting to saying goodbye to the entire team we’ve spent the last three seasons invested in, and I do worry that it will feel even more difficult to move on thanks to the show still being set in the same location as before with most of the same support staff in place. It likely would have been an easier transition to send Ted and a few key players to an all new part of the world for a cleaner break from what came before, but even as we prep for these big changes, the premiere does give hope that Sudeikis and new co-showrunner Jack Burditt have learned that less can be more. Ted Lasso needed to feel more reined in again… albeit with a 47-minute runtime. Hey, that’s still short by Season 3’s standards! And while we have yet to meet the new team, the prospect of returning to the Season 1 feel of Ted and his team getting to know each other and once more starting from a true underdog perspective is a welcome one.

Verdict

Ted Lasso sets the stage for its return with an extended prologue of sorts, explaining what Ted’s been up to back in Kansas City before some old friends come calling in order to lure him back to coaching in London. Even though Season 3 often felt incredibly overstuffed, the core characters remained charming and likable, and that’s underlined here by a premiere that focuses only on Ted, Rebecca, Leslie, and Keeley, reminding fans why we were drawn to them in the first place. It remains to be seen if Ted Lasso fully has its mojo back this season, and how the new team that Ted’s coaching will compare to the former group, but for now it’s a promising start.

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Ted Lasso Season 4 Premiere Review

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Ted Lasso returns with an engaging Kansas City-set season premiere that catches us up with Ted and a few key characters, setting the stage for the show’s new soft reboot approach following a three-year absence.

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