Ted Lasso: The Richmond Way (4K UHD Review)
Director
Created by Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, and Joe KellyRelease Date(s)
2020-23 (December 2, 2025)Studio(s)
Ruby’s Tuna/Doozer/Universal Television/Warner Bros. Television/Apple TV (Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: A
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: N/A
Review
Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) is a humble American college football coach, who’s hired by the new owner of an ailing English Premier League club, AFC Richmond, to take over the leadership of her team. But this particular owner, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham), secretly wants nothing more than for Ted to run the team into the ground. You see, Rebecca won the club in a divorce from her unfaithful husband, who loves AFC Richmond above all else. And there’s a very big difference between American football and the English variety… about which the earnest Coach Lasso knows next to nothing.
Fortunately, Ted brings his longtime friend and faithful assistant, Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), across the pond to help. And though the club’s players and fans initially have little faith in him, Ted’s aw-shucks charm and genuine approach to coaching slowly begins to earn their grudging trust. You see, the thing is… Ted actually cares more about each and every one of his players as human beings than mere wins or losses. It’s this very belief in his players that soon inspires them to begin believing in themselves. And as any good coach knows, that’s the real key to winning in anything.
As fans of the show may know, Sudeikis and Hunt honed their early comedy chops while working at Boom Chicago in Amsterdam. During their time in Europe, the pair also developed a love of English football. So, when asked by NBC Sports to come up with a series of promos for the network’s coverage of the UK’s Premier League in 2013, Sudeikis drew upon this experience—as well as the inspiration of his high school basketball coach, Donnie Campbell, and the great college coaching legend John Wooden. This eventually led to the series being pitched and developed for Apple TV+ with the help of veteran producer Bill Lawrence (Scrubs, Spin City, Shrinking).
Ted Lasso was perhaps an unlikely hit, but the show’s critical reviews were immediately positive, and streaming audiences responded so enthusiastically that it was quick to earn a renewal. The thing about Ted Lasso is that the series is unashamedly positive, and its key characters tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves. It also helped that the series premiered during the COVID pandemic. So while stuck at home with uncertainty and tragedy playing out around the world, people needed feel-good laughs and a regular dose of positivity which the show provides in abundance.
This series’ other great strength is that it’s a genuine ensemble. It starts with Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein, also a writer on the show and a co-creator of Apple TV’s Shrinking), a veteran footballer at the end of his career. There’s Keeley Jones (Juno Temple, FX’s Fargo), a quirky model and occasional player “WAG” who becomes AFC Richmond’s PR manager. There’s Leslie Higgins (Jeremy Swift), the team’s Director of Football Operations, and Nate Shelley (Nick Mohammed), who begins as the team’s awkward kit manager but certainly doesn’t end there. Then there’s the team itself, including Jamie Tartt played by Phil Dunster (“Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo!”), Dani Rojas played by Cristo Fernández (“Football is life!”), and Sam Obisanya played by Toheeb Jimoh (“I think we should all be a goldfish.”). And of course, we mustn’t forget the caustic Trent Crimm (James Lance), sports reporter at large for The Independent.
Highlight episodes include Carol of the Bells, one of the best Christmas installments of any modern television series in years; Rainbow, featuring Roy Kent’s big return to the AFC Richmond pitch (as a coach); No Weddings and a Funeral, a genuine standout for Rebecca; Sunflowers, which gives multiple characters a chance to shine and grow; and Beard After Hours, which is… well, let’s just call it a weird and wonderful little gem and leave it at that.
Ted Lasso is captured digitally in the ARRIRAW codec (at 4.5K) using Arri Alexa Mini LF cameras with Tokina Cinema Vista Prime lenses, and it’s finished as a native 4K Digital Intermediate at the 2.00:1 aspect ratio. This aspect ratio is used by a number of Apple TV productions and it’s chosen to balance a cinematic feel with modern widescreen display compatibility. The show is routinely graded for high dynamic range and these discs feature Dolby Vision (compatible with HDR10). The episodes are encoded for 66 GB or 100 GB discs as needed, in a variable data rate that runs from 30 to 100 Mbps, but averages between 40 and 80 Mbps (about double what you’d experience on Apple TV streaming presentations). The result is stunning image quality, with excellent detail, rich and accurate colors, and impressive dimensionality. Blacks are deep, while highlights are bold and natural, each retaining nice detail on both ends. The cinematography here isn’t exactly flashy, but this 4K image is pretty close to perfect for this series.
The show’s original English language audio mixes are included here in lossless 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio format—very similar in quality to their Dolby Atmos counterparts on Apple TV. (It’s too bad actual Atmos isn’t included, but that might be a disc space issue. And for a series like this, I think the difference is slight.) The soundstage is medium wide up front, with atmospheric use of the surround channels for music and stadium crowd noise during the show’s football matches. Dialogue is clear, the overall tonal quality is rich and buttery, bass is more than sufficient, and the series’ pop music soundtrack sounds lovely indeed. Optional subtitles for English for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing are also available.
Warner’s 4K release is an 8-disc set that includes all 34 original episodes on Ultra HD. (No Blu-ray version is included, but Blu-ray versions are available separately.) Sadly, no special features are included, but here’s the disc-by-disc breakdown of the episodes:
Season One, Disc One
- Pilot (4K – 30:54)
- Biscuits (4K – 29:19)
- Trent Crimm: The Independent (4K – 30:22)
- For the Children (4K – 33:37)
- Tan Lines (4K – 31:04)
Season One, Disc Two
- Two Aces (4K – 31:42)
- Make Rebecca Great Again (4K – 32:07)
- The Diamond Dogs (4K – 29:42)
- All Apologies (4K – 31:16)
- The Hope That Kills You (4K – 32:39)
Season Two, Disc One
- Goodbye Earl (4K – 34:41)
- Lavender (4K – 33:47)
- Do the Right-est Thing (4K – 36:48)
- Carol of the Bells (4K – 30:27)
- Rainbow (4K – 38:35)
Season Two, Disc Two
- The Signal (4K – 35:07)
- Headspace (4K – 35:42)
- Man City (4K – 45:27)
- Beard After Hours (4K – 43:02)
Season Two, Disc Three
- No Weddings and a Funeral (4K – 46:06)
- Midnight Train to Royston (4K – 42:23)
- Inverting the Pyramid of Success (4K – 49:53)
Season Three, Disc One
- Smells Like Mean Spirit (4K – 43:37)
- (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea (4K – 47:10)
- 4-5-1 (4K – 46:59)
- Big Week (4K – 49:46)
- Signs (4K – 49:48)
Season Three, Disc Two
- Sunflowers (4K – 63:12)
- The Strings That Bind Us (4K – 57:30)
- We’ll Never Have Paris (4K – 54:57)
- La Locker Room Aux Folles (4K – 44:05)
Season Three, Disc Three
- International Break (4K – 63:38)
- Mom City (4K – 69:31)
- So Long, Farewell (4K – 75:24)
Again, no special features are included, nor is there a Digital code—to be expected given that this series remains a popular Apple TV Original. But the discs come packaged in standard multi-disc 4K Elite cases (one for each season), and there’s a thin cardboard slipcase to hold them.
As popular as Ted Lasso has ultimately become, the series’ producers originally had only a three-season plan. But audience demand—and no doubt a strong desire on the part of Apple to continue the show—led to its renewal for a delayed fourth season, which drops in August. (Thus the lack of Complete Series branding on this box set.) The new season is expected to feature Coach Lasso’s return to the UK, recruited by Rebecca to coach the AFC Richmond women’s team, the Lady Greyhounds. Until then, this new 4K Ultra HD release is the perfect way to refresh your memory.
-Bill Hunt
(You can follow Bill on social media on Twitter, BlueSky, and Facebook, and also here on Patreon)