Can Ted Lasso Do It Twice?
The biggest premiere of the week is also the most contested. Ted Lasso returns Wednesday, August 5 on Apple TV, and it arrives carrying a question no amount of shortbread can soften: why reopen a story that ended this well? Season 3 closed the book properly. Ted stepped down, flew home to Kansas to be a father to his son Henry, and Richmond carried on without him, which was always the point. Endings that clean are rare in television. So Wednesday's premiere will do one of two things: build something real on top of that ending, or quietly vandalize it.
The case for leaving it alone deserves a fair hearing. The finale was a genuine ending, not a pause. Ted chose his son over his job and the camera let him go; the club he left behind was thriving precisely because he was no longer needed there. Sequels to finished stories usually run on affection rather than ideas, and the danger here is obvious. Same kit, same theme song, and underneath it a different, lesser show borrowing the old one's goodwill. A spin-off wearing the original's shirt.
But that fear gets the premise backwards. By the end of season 3 the formula was spent. The men's underdog machine had nowhere left to climb, and every cynic Ted could convert had been converted. A straight continuation would have proved the doubters right inside two episodes, and this is not that. Ted comes back to coach a newly formed second-division women's team at Richmond, which Apple is openly calling his biggest challenge yet. That is not a victory lap. It is a demotion into hope, and it hands the show the one thing revivals never have: stakes nobody has already seen him win. Jason Sudeikis gets to be the beginner in the room again. Meanwhile the men's team hunts for glory under a new no-nonsense manager, Roy Kent, which means Brett Goldstein finally inherits the whistle. Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brendan Hunt and Jeremy Swift all return, with Tanya Reynolds and Faye Marsay leading the new arrivals.
The catch-up, minus the homework
You do not need a full rewatch before Wednesday. Season 4 picks up from Ted's exit, so the season 3 finale is the one required stop: it resets every relationship the new season is built on. If you have a spare evening, add the two episodes before it to track Roy's slow turn toward management. Everything else your memory will hand back the moment the theme song starts. One episode lands on premiere day, then weekly through October 7, so the old appointment-viewing rhythm is back too. Ten Wednesdays of Richmond.
If Richmond is home
Between Wednesdays, keep the feeling going. Shrinking runs on the same faith that broken people get better out loud and in company. Welcome to Wrexham is documentary proof the Lasso fantasy exists in real life, football romance built from the bottom of the table up, and the closest rhyme to what season 4 is attempting. Abbott Elementary does Richmond's trick in a school: a workplace where kindness is a tactic, not a weakness.
