Why Ted Lasso’s syrupy all-American soccer utopia leaves Brits cold

Contains spoilers for the finales of both Succession and Ted LassoTwo of the most talked-about television shows of the past few years concluded this week, in the forms of Succession and Ted Lasso. Despite the presence of Harriet Walter as a matriarch prone to giving dubious advice in both series, they otherwise have remarkably little in common.

Succession is a misanthropic, cynical show about the worst aspects of human nature that ended, unsurprisingly, with its principal characters all betraying one another and being condemned to a purgatory of their own creation.  Ted Lasso, however, is a sunny, upbeat programme that celebrates the good in people, and posits the belief that everyone has the ability to succeed, as long as they are true to themselves and to their fellow man.

It ended happily for everyone, save Anthony Head’s snarling and villainous rival football club owner Rupert Mannion, who found himself humiliated and cast adrift. That Head’s sneering one-liners often made him the most entertaining (or at least guiltily pleasurable) character on screen is by the by.

 The existential differences between the two series – which are both amongst the most award-winning in recent years – are exemplified beautifully by their conclusions. In Succession, we end with the protagonist Kendall Roy adrift and alone, having failed in everything he’s sought from life.

In Ted Lasso, however, the show finishes with Ted having thoroughly redeemed the football club he has been brought into, AFC Richmond, and having made everyone’s lives happier, richer and fuller thanks to his inimitable brand of all-American optimism, before returning home to his son.  The first show is an elegant and intelligent feel-bad opus; the latter seems