Ted Lasso (2020-present) * *

Starring:  Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, Juno Temple, Phil Dunster, Nick Mohammed, Brendan Hunt

Ted Lasso begins as a promising fish-out-of-water series about an American football coach hired by a scheming European League soccer team owner in hopes he will flop and humiliate her ex-husband who formerly owned the team.  But then it grew into a slog and ran out of gas by the end of season two.  Whether I'll watch season three is still up in the air.  Where did a series that started so swimmingly go so wrong?

Ted Lasso (Sudeikis) is hired by Richmond FC owner Rebecca Wilton (Waddingham) after a video of him celebrating a Division II football title went viral.  She recently was awarded full ownership of the club in her divorce.  Does she want to win?  No, she wants to get back at her ex by running the team he loves into the ground.   Ted is a folksy optimist who admittedly knows nothing about soccer but wishes to learn.  He takes his longtime assistant "Beard" (Hunt) along for the trip to London.  Ted's eternal positivity is hard to withstand, even for Rebecca, who receives a daily helping of biscuits from Ted each morning.  It doesn't take long for Rebecca to succumb to Ted's charms (although not romantically) and soon enough she feels guilty and confesses her plot to him, which takes away a good part of the edge.  Rebecca is no Rachel Phelps (for those Major League fans out there).

Ted has to deal with two different types of team distractions:  Jamie (Dunster), the egotistical star of the team who doesn't play well with others, and gruff veteran Roy Kent (Goldstein), who doesn't like Jamie and can't stand having a novice like Ted coach the team.  We know the scales will fall from their eyes eventually.  The biggest concern with the first two seasons is how Ted Lasso simply plods along without much direction.  There isn't enough soccer for us to care about, and the characters aren't entirely engrossing.  Like the show, they are compelling in spurts, but not enough to carry our attention over two seasons.