Category: Reviews

Like the scrappy soccer team it follows, Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso is a bit of an underdog. After all, it was based on a series of NBC Sports commercials, which isn’t the most promising start, and it debuted to little fanfare last summer on a new streaming service that hadn’t found its breakout hit yet.

But underdogs can surprise you: Overwhelmingly positive word-of-mouth turned Ted Lasso into an unlikely sensation, and it became one of last year’s most acclaimed series. (Suddenly, at every party, you’d hear someone saying, “Have you seen Ted Lasso? I loooove Ted Lasso!”) That’s a lot to live up to in Season 2 — which premieres Friday, July 23 on the streamer — but having seen the first three episodes, I’m happy to report that the new season is just as good as you’re hoping… though it has a more melancholy tone than you might be expecting.

Season 2 picks up after last season’s heartbreak, with Ted (Jason Sudeikis) and his ragtag team AFC Richmond being relegated to a lesser soccer league, where they frustratingly keep getting ties in match after match. The premiere does get off to a bumpy start with a clunky plot point that’s out of character for a normally grounded series, but it leads to the introduction of Season 2’s big addition: sports psychologist Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, played by Sarah Niles (I May Destroy You). She’s brought in to help get the players’ heads on straight, and she quickly lets Ted know she’s not a fan of juvenile horseplay… or cookies. The players love her, but she’s seemingly immune to Ted’s charms — and her arrival triggers a fresh wave of anxiety in the old ball coach.

In fact, she has plenty of psychological issues to sort through here. Season 2 has a mournful, uneasy feel to it overall; it’s almost like an emotional hangover after last season’s sugar high. Nearly every character has hit a rough patch of some sort: Former rivals Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) and Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) are both humbled by various setbacks and are in the process of building their way back up to their former glory. Even the relentlessly upbeat Ted is haunted by demons that he hasn’t fully processed yet. If Season 1 was all about Ted winning everyone over with the power of positivity, Season 2 is more like, “OK… so now what?”

But don’t worry: The plucky, can-do spirit that made last season so special still endures. It’s tough to pick a favorite performance from this deep roster of supporting players — they’re all so good! — but Hannah Waddingham has an especially strong start in Season 2, as Rebecca embarks on a terrifying new chapter in her life. Plus, Toheeb Jimoh’s Sam takes a big step forward, and Episode 3 puts him in the spotlight with an intriguing dramatic turn that deals with the ethical pitfalls of corporate sponsorship. Meanwhile, Ted is still the king of random pop-culture references (“Make like Dunst and Union, and bring it on!” he tells a reporter), and Sudeikis’ goofy, folksy appeal continues to set the tone and tie the whole series together.

What is it about Ted Lasso that made us all fall so hard for it, though? Maybe it just hit us at the perfect time: Debuting during a pandemic when all of us felt disconnected and stressed out, this show is warm, and cozy, and life-affirming. It reassures us that people are essentially kind… even the people who seem the least kind at first. Like Friday Night Lights, the sports setting is almost beside the point. At its core, Ted Lasso is a human story — and a nice reminder that, through victory and defeat (and even ties), we’re all on the same team.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Season 2 of Ted Lasso nimbly avoids the sophomore slump with a pivotal new addition and a more introspective tone.

How would you like to find yourself living inside a classic movie musical? Your answer to that may very well determine how much you’ll enjoy Apple TV+’s new comedy Schmigadoon! (premiering Friday, July 16). It’s a very affectionate, very specific parody of Golden Age musicals, and theater nerds will undoubtedly adore it… but others might be put off by all the excessive cheer. (The exclamation point in the title is there for a reason.) After watching all six episodes, though, I can say that it fully won me over: The cast is top-to-bottom fantastic, the enthusiasm is infectious, and the sharp jabs it takes at the genre’s wheezy old clichés give it a distinctly meta edge.

Sketch comedy veterans Cecily Strong (SNL) and Keegan-Michael Key (Key & Peele) star as Melissa and Josh, a pair of doctors who fell in love but have since drifted into an unhappy rut. They go on a couples’ retreat to revive their romance, and while they’re backpacking in the woods, they stumble upon a magical land where the peppy citizens greet them with an elaborate song-and-dance number. She’s a musical fan, so she’s charmed… but he’s not. And there’s a creepy, Twilight Zone-y twist, too: They can’t leave the town and get back to their lives without finding true love. (And they haven’t found it with each other, apparently.)

Inspired by the likes of Brigadoon, Oklahoma! and The Music Man, the town of Schmigadoon is a triumph of imagination — and of production design. Its citizens are familiar types, from the mustached mayor (Alan Cumming) and the whip-smart schoolmarm (Ariana DeBose) to the bad-boy bachelor who can’t be tamed (Aaron Tveit) and the little kid with an adorable lisp (Liam Quiring-Nkindi). The colorfully elaborate sets and costumes are worth the price of admission alone; they’re an absolute feast for the eyes. (The sets are both wonderfully immersive and slightly artificial, with a faint whiff of theatricality to them; we can almost see the seams.) The original songs mimic beloved showtunes, and the townsfolk happily perform them in zesty, full-scale dance numbers. So for fans of classic musicals, it’s a delight just taken at face value.

This town has decidedly old-fashioned values, though… which is a nice way of saying they’re all painfully regressive. (They can’t believe Melissa is actually a doctor: “But you’re a girl.”) Kristin Chenoweth plays town scold Mildred Layton, who won’t even allow Melissa and Josh to stay in the same room at the local inn, since they’re (gasp!) unmarried. Luckily, Melissa is a musical expert, so she knows what to expect, and through her eyes, the show gleefully takes aim at the musical genre’s problematic clichés, with lots of knowing winks to the audience. (“Women were so underwritten in early musicals,” she sighs.) Schmigadoon! manages to dissect the genre and celebrate it at the same time, pointing out its glaring flaws while still embracing its virtues.

The actors are clearly having a ball, too. Strong is great and goofy here, in one of her best roles yet. (The Sound of Music-esque tune that Melissa sings to teach the locals about a woman’s reproductive anatomy is a hilariously naughty highlight.) We know Key is a tremendously gifted comedian, so it’s frustrating to watch him mostly play the humorless straight man here, but he does have a few zany moments. And the supporting cast is almost embarrassingly stacked: Tveit and Cumming are especially good, as are Jane the Virgin‘s Jaime Camil as the dashing town doctor and 30 Rock‘s Jane Krakowski as the glamorous Countess. Most of them only get a scant few minutes of screen time, though, unfortunately. I almost wanted the show to be longer than six episodes, just so we could see more of these great actors inhabiting this weird world.

The story does get a little cutesy and simplistic at times, almost like a kids’ movie. (Co-creators Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio are best known for their work on the Despicable Me franchise, which makes a lot of sense.) Most of the songs end up being too faithful to the genre: They could fit right into a classic musical soundtrack, but they lack an inspired comedic spin. I found myself wishing the show would go further, hit harder, follow through on its more savage instincts. But it does build to a satisfying finish, echoing Pleasantville as the two outsiders kick off a chain reaction of chaos in town with their new-fangled ways. It just goes to show you: Even old stories can always be rewritten.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Apple TV+’s Schmigadoon! is a colorful treat for fans of classic musicals, with enough satirical bite to cut through the sweetness.

Loki is ready for his close-up, as the star of Disney+’s third live-action Marvel series (premiering this Wednesday — yes, Wednesday — June 9). Is the trickster still a treat when given much more to do than steal the occasional MCU scene?

Replaying and then picking up immediately after Loki’s appearance in Avengers: Endgame — where as a prisoner circa 2012, he happened upon a dropped Tesseract and teleported to (hopefully!) freedom — the first episode quickly lands the Asgardian trickster right back in custody, nabbed by the TVA (Time Variance Authority). Identified as an anachronistic “variant,” Loki is subject to a bureaucratic slog of a registration process led by Miss Minutes (voiced by Tara Strong), a helpful cartoon character who schools him and us on the Time Keepers, a holy trinity whose mission is to protect the “sacred timeline” from anomalies that could lead to the “madness” of a “multiverse” war. (Doctor Strange 2 plug? Check!)

In these early scenes, MCU vet Tom Hiddleston effortlessly slips back into not just the role of Loki, but specifically the version of him that was about to be imprisoned more than a decade ago in the films’ timeline, and thus was a bit more bratty.

Meanwhile, TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius (played with just the right amount of chill by Owen Wilson) is investigating the latest murders by an especially violent variant, in 1549 France, when he gets wind of Loki’s apprehension. Instantly, Mobius’ wheels start turning… though it takes about half of an episode too long for his out-of-the-box idea to present itself, when we can easily foresee where this is heading. Instead, we get much intra-agency squabbling and a requisite escape attempt — though a quiet sequence where Loki watches seminal moments from his MCU life (including those not yet lived…) proves to be quite moving.

The banter between Hiddleston and Wilson is electric and often hilarious — a significant upgrade from what Falcon and Winter Soldier believed it was doing — and I cannot stress how critical that is, since the two, roughly 50-minute episodes sent to critics (out of six total) revolves around their push me/pull you dynamic. (The fact that Loki and Mobius at one point make what is essentially a library all-nighter as entertaining as it is is testament to the actors’ chemistry.)

The early episodes also feature Wunmi Mosaku (Lovecraft Country) as B-15, a badass and quietly funny TVA hunter tasked with keeping Loki in check (and who understandably grows exasperated doing so!) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (The Morning Show) as Ravonna Lexus Renslayer, a TVA justice who thus far is a bit underwritten and comes off as that police captain forever wagging her finger at Mobius and his unorthodox crimesolving ways. But as Loki repeatedly clamors for an audience with the mighty Time Keepers, her role will surely expand and deepen. Sophia Di Martino (the U.K.’s Casualty) and Richard E. Grant (Dispatches From Elsewhere) also star.

The set design for Loki is top-notch, evoking Terry Gilliam’s Brazil with its art deco depiction of the TVA’s base of operations, while nifty visual effects are employed to keep Loki “chained up” and to dispatch agents to time period after time period.

Once the premise for the series is in place, things get very fun, as Loki channels his mischievous brilliance into splendid detective work and he and Mobius engage in some timey-wimey theory testing, all building to a tantalizing, two-pronged reveal — one capping each hour — that opens up all kinds of possibilities for the rest of the six-episode season.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Loki promises to be a good time (after time).