Review: Did we miss 'Ted Lasso' more than we want to admit?

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Set us as preferred After three years, “Ted Lasso” has returned to the pitch.Did it need to? The third season finale, which seemed until now to be a series finale, brought most every character’s arc to a satisfying, credible conclusion — the less satisfying ones were just as credible — while pointing to a future you were free to imagine, or think nothing more about.

Or you could write fan fiction.(People do.) I loved the show, but its absence has not been a painful one.Anyway, it’s back, beginning Wednesday on Apple TV, and I am glad enough.

Strictly speaking, it’s a new adventure, as one Indiana Jones movie might follow another, with Jason Sudeikis’ title character returning to Richmond to manage a new women’s soccer team, a project raised way back at the end of Season 3, and which now has “been three years in the making.”Where are we now? Star player Jamie Tartt has departed the show all the way to Barcelona; kit man turned coach turned competition turned kit man Nate Shelley is nowhere to be seen.But as much may be said of the whole of AFC Richmond, apart from Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), who took over as manager when Ted returned to Kansas City, Mo., to spend more time with son Henry (Grant Feely, replacing Gus Turner), and Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt), who has turned into an uncommunicative mass of hair.

This is not at all that team’s story, though certain fans within (and perhaps without) the world of the series might prefer that it was.Four episodes out of 10 have been made available for review.The first is something of a hurdle, bogged down in contrivances to get Ted back to Richmond from Kansas City, where he has been “trying to help [Henry] become the best version of himself.” The question is whether Ted, working part time as the assistant manager of a supermarket, is living the best ver...