THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM (TED LASSO, SEASON ONE)

It all began as a character in some tongue in cheek promos for live English Premier League soccer matches on NBC in the United States.

Now 'Ted Lasso' is an international phenomenon, thanks to Apple TV+ and a staggering 20 Emmy nominations for its first season.

Such has been its impact it has worked its way into the football lexicon.

Any American linked to the game in Britain, like former Leeds United manager Jesse Marsch, is inevitably compared to Ted.

© Apple TV+

The Canadian and US Hollywood partnership of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have found their FX docuseries about the Welsh football club they own 'Welcome to Wrexham' being compared to the Apple TV+ show.

In fact, when it comes to British football, it seems there's no escaping comparisons to 'Ted Lasso'.

What is also not in doubt is that it is Jason Sudeikis' best loved comic character.

For the uninitiated, Ted is one of those relentless optimists you might see in a Frank Capra movie.

© Apple TV+

Unflappable in the face of adversity, he refuses to let a negative thought enter his head and projects devotion and belief in his team.

Switching sports, his knowledge of soccer is sketchy but, luckily, he has brought Brendan Hunt's Coach Beard with him from America who absorbs himself in the game.

Famous in the US for a rather exuberant celebration of his college football team in Wichita, Kansas capturing the NCAA II title, he and Coach Beard are improbably packed off on a plane to London to manage a Premier League underdog team AFC Richmond.

Why has he been chosen to manage a Premier League squad in England on a sport he has no knowledge of?

Because the owner, Hannah Waddingham's Rebecca Welton has inherited the club in a bitter divorce from her unfaithful millionaire ex, Anthony Head's James Mannion and wants to drive it to destruction.

© Apple TV+

Ted has essentially been hired by her as an unwitting fool who will demote the team, demoralise the players and the fans and ultimately destroy the club her ex built.

The problem is Ted is just so nice and positive it's kind of hard to root for him to fail.

Thrown to the wolves with a disastrous televised press conference, he is called a wanker by the fanbase in the stadium, on the street and in the pub.

The media treat him like a buffoon.

However Ted bears it all with good grace.

© Apple TV+

He takes the time to get to know everyone from the star players like Brett Goldstein's hardman Roy Kent and Phil Dunster's wannabe Beckham, Jamie Tartt to Nick Mohammed's mild mannered kitman Nathan Shelley.

Ted always has an encouraging word for every one of them, even when he is being savaged at his press conferences.

He even bakes gorgeous cookies for Rebecca for their daily meeting.

Sudeikis and his fellow writers Hunt, Goldstein, Bill Lawrence, Joe Kelly, Jane Becker, Jamie Lee, Bill Wrubel, Leann Bowen and Phoebe Walsh have a lot of fun at the expense of Ted's ignorance of the game, his sunny optimism and his tolerance of the abuse thrown at him by the AFC Richmond fans.

© Apple TV+

While he tries to lift the build the confidence of players like Toheeb Jimoh's Nigerian right back Sam Obisanya and Cristo Fernandez's recently injured Mexican striker Dani Rojas, he also wins over the club's grouchy hardman Kent and other sceptics.

He finds the arrogant, vain, selfish and disrespectful Jamie Tartt, who is on loan from Manchester City, a much harder nut to crack.

But that doesn't deter Ted working on trying to pierce Jamie's emotional armour.

Rebecca too finds it increasingly hard to undermine Ted as the squad starts to make a decent fist of their battle to survive relegation.

© Apple TV+

And what he lacks in tactical nous is more than made up for by Nathan's astute knowledge of the game.

With episodes directed by Tom Marshall, Zach Braff, Elliot Heggarty, MJ Delaney and Declan Lowney, the first season of 'Ted Lasso' is a charming tale of a good man trying to do good things when the odds are stacked heavily against him.

Like most of the characters in the sitcom, it would take the hardest of hearts not to like Ted or the show.

Even if there aren't huge belly laughs in every episode, there's an infectious breeziness to it all even when people are being nasty.

© Apple TV+

The show is mostly a vehicle for Sudeikis who for the most part plays Ted with an infectious Midwestern US bonhomie.

With his quaint homespun wisdom, generosity and niceness, it's like he's a Jimmy Stewart character on steroids.

After decades of consuming a diet of cynical and sneering British and American sitcoms, there's something really enjoyable about seeing a loveable character who shows no malice - even when he is coping with the strain of being separated from his wife and son back in Kansas.

Waddingham is an effective foil too as Rebecca who turns out not to be the confident, cold, calculating manipulator she sets out to be but someone with a lot more empathy and self doubt than you might expect.

© Apple TV+

Goldstein does a decent job as an English version of Roy Keane as Kent, while Dunster is good fun as Tartt.

Juno Temple shines as the loud model who catches Kent's eye after having been Tartt's girlfriend.

Hunt and Mohammed have fun as the backroom staff while Jimoh, Fernandez and Kola Bokinni as the centre back and vice captain Isaac McAdoo all play their part.

Head relishes the chance to play the silver tongued villain, while Jeremy Swift is good at playing the buffoon as the club's Head of Communications, Leslie Higgins. 

© Apple TV+

What 'Ted Lasso' also gets right in its first season is the relationship between English football clubs and their passionate fans.

Adam Colborne, Bronson Webb and Kevin Garry's Baz, Jeremy and Paul pop up like a Greek chorus at key moments of the show in a pub adorned with AFC Richmond memorabilia run by Annette Badland's no nonsense landlady Mae.

James Lance amuses too as a smug and cynical soccer reporter for The Independent, Trent Crimm.

But the cast are also helped by tight, pacy scripts that never overstay their welcome.

© Apple TV+

As with a lot of sports dramas and comedies, the weakest parts of the show are the sequences that try to conjure up the magic of events on the football pitch.

Each attempt by the directors to depict the highs and lows of a game just looks awkward and unconvincing.

But in the end, it is the comedy off the field that matters and it mostly finds the back of the net.

© Apple TV+

'Ted Lasso' ultimately thrives because of Sudeikis' charm.

But as its first season progresses, you also realise it has much more strength and depth than you initially thought.

And that bodes well for future adventures involving AFC Richmond.

(The first season of 'Ted Lasso' was made available for streaming on Apple TV+ between August 14-October 20, 2020)