Since the first season of Apple's charming sports comedy series Ted Lasso dropped in August 2020, it's picked up a Golden Globe for star Jason Sudeikis, a Peabody, and a whopping 20 nominations for next week's Emmys.

It turns out that a sweet comedy about men and women trying to be good – against the backdrop of English Premier League soccer – was exactly the antidote we all needed for a year and a half of rolling lockdowns.

The runaway success of Ted Lasso has also turned the sweet-tempered fish-out-of-water comedy into an inescapable part of internet discourse, with people arguing over what the series is about and whether season two, which premiered at the end of July, is any good. But we'll get to that.

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OK, who or what is a Ted Lasso? Sounds somehow rodeo-related?

Ted Lasso ain't no rodeo. He's an affable and unflappably optimistic American football coach (played by Sudeikis, sporting a hearty moustache). When he's hired to head up flailing fictional English Premier League team AFC Richmond, Ted moves to London, leaving behind his wife and young son — but bringing his laconic 2IC, Coach Beard (Brendan Hunt).

Unbeknownst to Ted, he's just a pawn in a plan to sabotage the club.

Richmond's new owner, Rebecca Welton (Game of Thrones's Hannah Waddingham), won the club in her divorce settlement. In an attempt to get back at her cheating ex-husband, she hires the least-qualified coach possible – a man who doesn't even know the rules of soccer.

Ted eventually wins Rebecca over — by dint of daily shortbread deliveries (more on that later) and sheer will – but it'll take more than biscuits to get the team on board.

But I hate sport…

Fair, but that's just the set-up: Ted Lasso is fundamentally a show that offers – among the tight jokes and underdog sporting story – a vision of positive masculinity, camaraderie and redemption.

Ted Lasso won a Peabody earlier this year "for offering the perfect counter to the enduring prevalence of toxic masculinity, both on-screen and off, in a moment when the nation truly needs inspiring models of kindness".

The character of Ted is optimistic, kind and encouraging – and basically the opposite to the flawed, cynical antihero we're used to watching in American TV comedies (see: Curb Your Enthusiasm; It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia).

And he's not the only 'good man' in Ted Lasso. While Richmond captain Roy Kent (comedian Brett Goldstein) is gruff and hard around the edges, his capacity for kindness – especially towards his young niece – is a real joy to watch.

Goldstein, who is also a writer on the show, told Vanity Fair that people don't acknowledge the less feel-good aspects of Ted Lasso often enough – where characters grapple with relationship breakdowns, career troubles and problems with their sense of self.

"It's dark, it's really dark. But it is about people being their best selves in difficult circumstances," he said.

On Double J podcast Bang On, broadcaster and journalist Myf Warhurst agreed, describing Ted Lasso as "a sporting-based show, but it's actually got nothing to do with sport. It's about feeling good and it's about raising people up and finding their best selves".

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Hang on: why would an American football coach sign on to an English Premier League team?

We won't spoil why exactly Ted decides to move to America – only that it's heart-wrenching and real.

But what we can explain is the character's origin story: as a marketing campaign for US TV network NBC.

Yep, Ted Lasso was originally created in 2013 to promote NBC Sports's coverage of the English Premier League in America. In the promo, then-Saturday Night Live star Sudeikis played Ted as he landed in England to coach a real EPL team, Tottenham Hotspur.

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After the promo proved popular, Sudeikis, Hunt, Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, and former SNL writer Joe Kelly developed Ted Lasso for TV.

Who else is in the cast of Ted Lasso? How do I know these people?

Phil Dunster (Humans) stars as the team's arrogant striker Jamie Tartt, and Juno Temple (Dirty John) as his model girlfriend Keeley Jones, who later becomes the club's manager of marketing and public relations.

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As for the rest of the club's staff: Comedian Nick Mohammed (Drifters) is kit-man-turned-assistant-coach Nathan Shelley, and you might recognise Jeremy Swift, who plays Director of Football Operations Leslie Higgins, from his turn on Downton Abbey (Spratt!).

In season two, Sarah Niles (Catastrophe) joins the cast as sports psychologist Dr. Sharon Fieldstone.

Wait, I heard a rumour that Roy Kent is CGI?

Let's clear it up: despite the viral Reddit thread that posits that the character could have come straight from the video game FIFA, Roy Kent is not CGI.

While yes, we can't deny that the character has a certain unreal glow around him, he is, as stated, played by Goldstein, who is a real man.

The comedian and writer responded to the conspiracy earlier this month by leaning into the joke as an animated avatar on Twitter: "I am a completely real, normal, human man, who just happens to live in a VFX house, and does normal, human, basic things like rendering and buffering and transferring data."

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Tell me more about those Ted Lasso biscuits.

Ted wins Rebecca over with shortbread, delivered in a pink box. We won't spoil where Ted gets them from. But here's a spot-on recipe if you want to make them yourself.

What do the Ted Lasso reviews say?

Daniel Fienberg in The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "It’s sweet, hopeful and obstinately corny … every episode climaxes with the sort of emotional uplift most shows would save for a season finale."

But Inkoo Kang offers an alternative vision for Ted Lasso in The Washington Post: "Given the international makeup of AFC Richmond, I would've preferred a show about soccer culture in the UK that deals more directly with the racial dynamics within its fan base, for example – an issue that Sudeikis himself recently addressed off-screen."

OK but I heard season two isn't very good… Should I even bother?

Some people have dismissed season two as it shifts its focus away from cheerful Ted's attempts to win over an unimpressed EPL team, and into the not-so-healthy psyches of Ted and his players.

In season two, it becomes apparent that a positive attitude is not actually enough to solve all of life's problems.

Doreen St. Félix in The New Yorker has the most cutting review: "The new season … can feel underbaked and free-floating, the writing formulaic, the plots even slighter than they were in Season 1."

But Jen Chaney in Vulture disagrees: "All of the more serious beats in this season of Ted Lasso are addressed in the exact proper proportion to the lighter, funnier moments so that it doesn't feel like a different show, just one that's added a couple layers of depth."

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Wait, what Emmys is Ted Lasso up for?

Ted Lasso has earned the most Emmy nominations ever for the first season of a comedy show with 20 across 12 categories, including Outstanding Comedy Series, Writing, Directing, Lead Actor, and Supporting Actor and Actress.

It has got some solid competition for Outstanding Comedy Series against the critically praised Hacks and the groundbreaking Black-ish, while Jason Sudeikis faces a stiff contest against Black-ish star Anthony Anderson, Michael Douglas (The Kominsky Method) and William H. Macy (Shameless) for Lead Actor.

Given that the show dominates the Supporting Actor category (with nominations for Goldstein, Hunt, Mohammed and Swift), surely they'll walk away with that one.

Will there be a Ted Lasso season three?

Yes, Apple confirmed a third season of Ted Lasso at the end of 2020 – before season two had even gone into production. We're likely to see the series on screens next year.

Where can I watch Ted Lasso in Australia?

New episodes of Ted Lasso drop on Friday afternoons on Apple TV+.

What's next?

If you're looking for other light comedies about friendship and optimism in the workplace, may we suggest these classics of the genre: Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, Brooklyn Nine-Nine or Scrubs.

For more easy-watching fish-out-of-water comedies, try Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt , featuring Ellie Kemper as a cult survivor, and Dan and Eugene Levy's family comedy Schitt's Creek, which blitzed the Emmys last year with its feel-good final season.

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