Forget TED Talks. Try Ted Love

Friends and colleagues have been badgering me for what feels like an eternity: ‘Watch Ted Lasso’. And now I have. Not all of it, so no spoilers, but enough to make a pronouncement. I’m a television connoisseur, and for nearly a decade I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that we’re living through a tv renaissance. If the Golden Age of Hollywood spanned the 1910s-20s, then there’s no doubt in my mind that a century later we’re in the Golden Age of Television. Mark it.

What is it then, that amid today’s countless brilliant productions, makes Ted Lasso such a seminal television series? Perhaps the best I’ve ever watched.

We could talk for hours about the script, the characterisation, the incredible performances – not a single duffer among them. We could debate how it’s possible for an American to comprehend ‘football’ so well, that the jokes are pitch-perfect for the football fan, but also for my wife who can’t stand the sport. We could speculate that the feel-good Ted is a hero for our deeply troubled times. That Rebecca and Keeley are the feminist icons the world needs in abundance. That our ideas of success are flawed, and that Ted’s apparently na?ve Kansas philosophy hits to the simplest of truths. Time and time again.

But you know what I think it is? What makes Ted Lasso head and shoulders the best thing on television today. It’s heart.

When I look around at productions in my world, and on television and film, I think you can tell those made by people who care. People who give a damn what they’re making and why. I think you can also tell when content has been made for the money. Or for the big green tick in the little black box. Which isn’t to say that money doesn’t matter – I’ve no doubt Ted Lasso is a big green tick in Apple and Warner Brothers’ black bank accounts – but if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, you’re liable to be seduced by the wrong things.

When I look at everything we’ve produced in the past decade, I can see love in nearly all of it. I can smell the sweat and hear the tears of anguish too. But I can really feel ‘the love’.

I can’t watch this film we made on the history of the Merlin Helicopter, without a little piece of grit hitting me in the eye at the end every time: https://vimeo.com/747679954?share=copy

I can’t watch this film on the rebirth of Harland and Wolff without feeling our love for the city of Belfast and its people: https://vimeo.com/736589991?share=copy

But one film I can’t share, and which moves all of us to tears every time is the story of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ we made for a client big and brave enough to tackle Inclusion through heart-rending stories of employee exclusion. It’s an incredible piece of film.

Like Ted Lasso, it’s incredible because it’s meant. It’s heartfelt. Which, when you think about it, is what all our content should be.