Forget ‘Severance,’ Apple TV’s Greatest Series Returns In Less Than 1 Month

“Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing.” I’ve lost count of how many times that line has popped into my head over the last five years. If you’re a Ted Lasso fan, there’s a good chance it has popped into your head, too. I know Severance is having a moment right now. Season 2 was everywhere earlier this year, and it deserved every bit of the attention it got. But if you ask me what the greatest series Apple TV has ever produced is, it’s not Severance. It’s not The Morning Show, Slow Horses, or Silo either. It’s Ted Lasso, a feel-good show about an American football coach hired to manage an English soccer club.

Ted Lasso won back-to-back Outstanding Comedy Series Emmys in 2021 and 2022, racked up 61 nominations and 13 wins, and built Apple TV’s entire identity in its early years. And after a three-year wait, Ted Lasso Season 4 is premiering in less than a month, and the surrounding anticipation comes with a sense of relief that the story is not over. Apple never officially called Season 3 a finale. The fact that we get another chapter, with Jason Sudeikis back and most of the core cast returning, is more than what fans thought they were going to get.

Season 4 of ‘Ted Lasso’ Is Taking Ted Somewhere New

Ted Lasso Season 4 premieres on Aug. 5, 2026. When Season 3 ended, the natural assumption was that Ted Lasso had told its full story. Ted came to Richmond, turned the club around, found himself in the process, and went home. It was a complete arc. The fact that Season 4 exists at all is already a gift, but the direction it’s heading in makes it more interesting.

In Ted Lasso Season 4, Ted returns to Richmond, but not to AFC Richmond’s men’s team. His new challenge is coaching a second-division women’s football team. The setup immediately resets the dynamics that made the first three seasons so emotionally resonant because Ted is starting over again. There will be new players, new staff, a different level of the game, and the same Ted Lasso energy applied to an unfamiliar situation. The teaser trailer, released in April and set to Mumford and Sons’ ‘Rubber Band Man,’ is deliberately light on plot and heavy on feeling, but it does feature one detail worth noting. A Richmond fan spots Ted and says, “Welcome back, Coach. Too bad you’re coaching a bunch of girls.” It suggests the resistance Ted is walking into, and the Apple TV+ masterpiece is great at dismantling that.

Hannah Waddingham is back as Rebecca, Brett Goldstein as Roy, Juno Temple as Keeley, Brendan Hunt as Beard, and Jeremy Swift as Higgins. The absences are notable too: Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) and Nate (Nick Mohammed) aren’t returning. New additions to Ted Lasso include Tanya Reynolds, whose work in Sex Education showed she can do strange and sincere simultaneously, which fits this world perfectly. Jack Burditt, who wrote for 30 Rock and Modern Family and recently served as a co-showrunner on Nobody Wants This, joins as executive producer and co-showrunner alongside Sudeikis.

Why ‘Ted Lasso’ Still Beats ‘Severance’ as Apple TV’s Greatest Show

Severance is a sci-fi masterpiece, and I won’t argue otherwise. The Lumon architecture, the cold visuals of the severed floor, and the way Adam Scott holds the entire emotional weight of the series together are remarkable. However, I think Ted Lasso is better for reasons that have nothing to do with world-building and everything to do with what the show does to you. Severance makes you think; Ted Lasso makes you feel something you weren’t necessarily prepared to feel, and then it makes you want to be a better version of yourself. I have rewatched several episodes of Ted Lasso on bad days, the way other people watch their comfort movies. I have never done that with Severance.

Ted Lasso understands that watching someone choose the right thing over and over again, in small moments and big, is genuinely inspiring. There’s a memorable scene in Season 2 where Ted has a panic attack mid-game and finally tells someone about it. That’s more relatable than anything in Severance’s two seasons. Not because it is better written, but because the show spent 18 episodes making you care enough about Ted for it to land that hard.

The fact that Season 4 is potentially the last of this perfect Apple TV series raises the stakes. While Sudeikis hasn’t confirmed it, the signs are there. So, if Ted Lasso gets back to the intimacy of Seasons 1 and 2 instead of the sprawling storylines that weighed down some of Season 3, it has a real chance at being the best it’s ever been.