Apple TV+ has had a bumpy start. “The Morning Show,” despite boasting two mega-stars as leads in Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, didn’t exactly catapult the service into popularity. “Dickinson” is insane but good, yet criminally under-watched. “See” wasn’t very good and even Oprah couldn’t manage to insert Apple TV+ into the streaming wars conversation.
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Apple TV+ needs to make some serious gains, so they’re mixing up something special. They’re taking one moderately successful commercial from 2014—Ted Lasso, a clueless American oaf character Jason Sudeikis portrayed in a series of promos for NBC Sports‘ coverage of the U.K. Premier League— and turning it into a full-blown series, yep, “Ted Lasso,” starring, who else, Jason Sudeikis.
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For those who managed to miss the commercial that is now almost 7 years old, Ted Lasso is “a small-time college football coach from Kansas hired to coach a professional soccer team in England, despite having no experience coaching soccer.”
Here’s the official synopsis:
Jason Sudeikis plays Ted Lasso, a small-time college football coach from Kansas hired to coach a professional soccer team in England, despite having no experience coaching soccer. In addition to starring, Sudeikis serves as executive producer, alongside Bill Lawrence (“Scrubs”) via his Doozer Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television and Universal Television, a division of NBCUniversal Content. Doozer’s Jeff Ingold also serves as an executive producer with Liza Katzer as co-executive producer. The series was developed by Sudeikis, Lawrence, Joe Kelly, and Brendan Hunt, and is based on the pre-existing format and characters from NBC Sports.
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Sudeikis will serve as executive producer along with Bill Lawrence, the brain behind “Scrubs.” The series, which also co-stars Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple and Brendan Hunt, will debut on Friday, August 14. Watch the first trailer below.
