Brendan Hunt, Jason Sudeikis and Tanya Reynolds in “Ted Lasso” Season 4.
Apple TV
Ted Lasso has viewers believing again — at least according to the early audience score for Season 4 on Rotten Tomatoes.
Starring Jason Sudeikis as the effervescent and eternally optimistic title character, Ted Lasso returned for its fourth season on Apple TV on Wednesday, three years after what was supposed to be the series finale for the two-time Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy winner.
In Season 4, Lasso is back in England three years after leaving AFC Richmond and returning home to Kansas City, but this time the American football-turned-British-soccer coach has been hired to Richmond’s Women’s Football Club.
Several — but not all — stars from first three seasons of Ted Lasso are back for Season 4, including Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Jeremy Swift and Brendan Hunt (who co-created the show with Sudeikis and Joe Kelly) are back for Season 4. New cast members include Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Aisling Sharkey and Abbie Hern.
Brendan Hunt, Jason Sudeikis and Tanya Reynolds in “Ted Lasso” Season 4.
Apple TV
Ted Lasso’s Rotten Tomatoes’ Audience Scores Don’t Always Line Up With Critics
While Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score for Ted Lasso Season 4 has been bouncing back and forth as new reviews are posted on the review aggregation site on Wednesday — it’s been as low as 75% “fresh” and as high as 91% — currently it comes in at 89% based on 56 reviews. If that score holds, it will mark the second-lowest critics’ score in the four seasons of Ted Lasso, behind Season 2’s 98% and Season 1’s 92%. The series low critics’ score was 81% for Season 3.
Rotten Tomatoes-registered viewers in the early going, however, are leaning toward awarding Ted Lasso its best audience score since the show’s first season. As of this publication, Ted Lasso has earned a 90% “fresh” audience score on RT’s Popcornmeter based on fewer than 50 verified user ratings, which is second behind Season 1’s 95% score based on 2,500-plus ratings.
Audience reactions to Season 2, oddly enough, didn’t line up with the near-perfect critics’ score RT, and the instead earned an 87% score based on 1,000-plus ratings. Not surprisingly, Season 3 of Ted Lasso, which had the lowest critics’ score of all four seasons of the show, also had the lowest audience score with 78% based on 78%.
It’s entirely possible that Ted Lasso Season 4’s audience score will drop in the coming days as more verified users on RT cast their votes on Episode 1, which is all that is available to the viewing public at this point.
So, with only three percentage points separating Seasons 4 and 2, Season 4 could conceivably drop from the second-highest rated season to the second-lowest season once more votes come in. As for becoming the lowest rated season of Ted Lasso, it seems pretty unlikely that the audience score will drop 12 percentage points to match Season 3’s series’ low on RT — but then again, there’s only one episode for audiences to consider so far where Ted Lasso could drop the ball.
As for other critic- and audience-rating organizations, Metacritic, as of this publication, has given Ted Lasso Season 4 a “generally favorable” critics’ score of 61 (out of 100) based on 28 reviews. Metacritic’s audience score is still pending.
Ted Lasso Season 4, Episode 1 is streaming on Apple TV. You can get the full release schedule for the new season here.