Shows Like
What to Watch After Ted Lasso
By Jordan A. · · 5 min read
Ted Lasso premiered on Apple TV Plus in 2020, created by Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt and Joe Kelly, and it won eleven Emmys across its first three seasons. Then it came back. Season four premiered on 5 August 2026 and became Apple's biggest launch ever by viewership, with Ted coaching a women's team this time. Reviews have been split, which is roughly what happens when a show everyone treats as comfort food changes anything at all.
What made the original work was never the football. It was a show about men being decent to each other on purpose, in a genre that usually treats sincerity as a punchline. The jokes were good, but the reason people rewatched it was the second season episode where Roy Kent says almost nothing and it lands anyway.
So if you've finished what's out and want the same feeling, the thing to look for isn't more sports comedy. It's shows about small communities where people are kind to each other and the writing still has teeth. Here are eight, with a note on where each one lives right now.
The most direct successors
Shrinking is the obvious first stop because it shares two of Ted Lasso's creators. Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein, who played Roy Kent, made it for Apple TV Plus in 2023. Segel plays a grieving therapist who starts telling his patients exactly what he thinks, with Harrison Ford as his boss doing the best comic work of his late career. Season three arrived in January 2026 with eleven episodes and a fourth was ordered the same month. It's warmer and sadder than Ted Lasso, and it handles grief head on rather than in flashback.
Schitt's Creek ran six seasons and eighty episodes from 2015 to 2020, created by Dan and Eugene Levy for CBC and Pop TV. A rich family loses everything and has to live in a motel in a town they once bought as a joke. The final season swept all seven major comedy categories at the 2020 Emmys, the first time any series had done that. The first season is noticeably weaker than what follows, so give it six episodes before deciding. It's on Hulu and HBO Max as of August 2026.
Trying is the other Apple TV Plus show in this lane, created by Andy Wolton and running since 2020. Esther Smith and Rafe Spall play a London couple going through adoption, and four seasons of eight episodes each have not run out of things to say about it. A fifth series began airing from 8 July 2026. It's smaller in scope than Ted Lasso and considerably gentler, and if you want conflict with teeth this is the wrong pick.
Small towns, good people, real writing
Somebody Somewhere ran on HBO for three seasons and fifteen episodes from 2022 to 2024, created by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen. Bridget Everett plays a woman back in Manhattan, Kansas after her sister dies, slowly finding a group of people who want her around. It is the closest thing on television to Ted Lasso's central idea, which is that being included is a plot event. Very little happens per episode, deliberately. It's on HBO Max as of August 2026.
Detectorists is Mackenzie Crook's BBC comedy about two men with metal detectors in an English field, running 2014 to 2022 across three series and twenty episodes plus two Christmas specials. Crook stars with Toby Jones. It won the BAFTA for best scripted comedy in 2015 and Jones won for his performance in 2018. It's the quietest show on this list by a distance and the one people are most likely to describe as having fixed their week. It's on Acorn TV as of August 2026.
Reservation Dogs ran on FX from 2021 to 2023, three seasons and twenty eight episodes, created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi. Four teenagers in rural Oklahoma try to get to California, and the show gradually widens until it's about the whole community around them. It was the first American series with all Indigenous writers and directors and an almost entirely Indigenous cast and crew. It's funnier than Ted Lasso and much stranger, and the finale is one of the best endings any recent comedy has managed. It's on Hulu as of August 2026.
Two more for the same shelf
Welcome to Wrexham is the non-fiction version of the Ted Lasso premise, on FX since 2022. Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds buy a fifth tier Welsh club and the cameras follow what happens, which turns out to be promotion in 2023, again in 2024, and again in 2025, taking Wrexham to the second tier. It has won eight Primetime Emmys. It leans sentimental and it knows exactly what it's doing, so your tolerance for that will decide it.
Parks and Recreation ran on NBC from 2009 to 2015, seven seasons and 125 episodes, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur. Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope is the direct ancestor of Ted Lasso: relentlessly earnest, slightly exhausting, and right more often than anyone expects. The first season got middling reviews and gets compared unfavorably to The Office; season two is where it becomes itself. Start at season two. It's on Peacock as of August 2026.
How to pick tonight
If you want the same creative team, Shrinking. If you want the same emotional register with less plot, Somebody Somewhere or Detectorists, and pick Detectorists if you also want to feel calm. Reservation Dogs is the one that will surprise you most. Parks and Recreation is the safe rewatchable answer when you want 125 episodes and no thinking.
If you'd rather not choose, our TV recommendation tool takes a few shows you've finished and suggests the next one.
Topics covered: ted-lasso, comedy, comfort, feel-good, shrinking, schitts-creek, detectorists, reservation-dogs
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and writes every guide on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu, and he still tests every pick the hard way: by watching it.