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      ‘Ted Lasso’ Will Return for Season 4 on Apple TV+

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      Apple TV+ announced on Friday that the Emmy-winning comedy will return for a fourth season. Jason Sudeikis will be back to reprise the title role.“Ted Lasso” fans who continued to believe will have their faith rewarded: The heartwarming soccer comedy is returning to the pitch.Apple TV+ announced on Friday morning that the series, about a folksy American coach hired to lead the fictional AFC Richmond in England’s Premier League, will come back for another season, its fourth. Jason Sudeikis, who created the series with Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly and Bill Lawrence, will return to reprise the title role and serve as an executive producer.“We all continue to live in a world where so many factors have conditioned us to ‘look before we leap,” Sudeikis said in a statement. “In Season 4, the folks at AFC Richmond learn to leap before they look, discovering that wherever they land, it’s exactly where they’re meant to be.”“Ted Lasso” debuted in August 2020 and ran for three seasons. Sudeikis and the other creators maintained all along that there were no plans for more episodes, though they didn’t rule it out. The Season 3 finale in May 2023 ended with Ted returning home to Kansas.In an interview on Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast, “New Heights,” on Friday morning, Sudeikis said Ted will be coaching a women’s team in the new season.“It’s daunting, because we told the story we wanted to tell,” he said. “But there’s more there.”Apple TV+ did not give a premiere date for the new season or respond to a request for more details.It is also unclear who else from the main cast will be back. Brett Goldstein, who starred as the surly but softhearted coach Roy Kent, will be back as writer and executive producer, Apple TV+ said in a news release. In August, Deadline reported that Warner Bros. Television, which produces the show, had signed deals with three stars to come back if the show returned to production: Goldstein; Hannah Waddingham, who plays the AFC Richmond owner, Rebecca Welton; and Jeremy Swift, who plays the team executive Leslie Higgins.The show’s other cast members have consistently said they would be eager to return. Most of the original creative team, including most of the show’s writers, will return for the new season. Jack Burditt, a veteran TV producer, most recently of last year’s Netflix hit “Nobody Wants This,” joins as an executive producer.Based on an NBC Sports ad, “Ted Lasso” debuted in the thick of the Covid 19 pandemic with few expectations. It went on to become the biggest hit Apple TV+ has ever had, winning 13 Emmys and millions of fans who praised its humor and themes of friendship and empathy. Those awards all came for the first two seasons; the third was much more divisive.“Ted Lasso” was widely celebrated as a source of emotional sustenance during the pandemic. News of its return arrives in a similarly acrimonious moment, so perhaps its timing is apt again. More

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      ‘Long Bright River’ and ‘Dope Thief’: Drugs and Murder in Philly

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      “Long Bright River,” on Peacock, and “Dope Thief,” on Apple TV+, set stories of drugs, murder and broken families on the mean streets of Philadelphia.After New York and Los Angeles, what is the third city of American crime drama? Boston, Chicago and San Francisco can all make claims, and many might choose Baltimore for “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “The Wire.” But lately, another city has been moving up the charts: Philadelphia is suddenly a hot location for moody stories about drugs and murder.In the mini-series “Long Bright River,” premiering as a binge watch on Thursday on Peacock, and “Dope Thief,” beginning Friday on Apple TV+, Philadelphia is the postindustrial crucible — vibrant but violent, caring but crime-ridden — for tales of working-class heroes doing battle with criminal forces. The shows follow HBO’s 2021 hit “Mare of Easttown” and precede another HBO law-enforcement drama, “Task,” that will feature F.B.I. agents in suburban Philadelphia. (And you can throw in the Hulu comedy “Deli Boys,” about a crime ring based in Philadelphia-area convenience stores.)The stars of the two new shows, Amanda Seyfried and Brian Tyree Henry, play people who are categorically different on the surface but, for dramatic purposes, could almost be the same character. Seyfried’s Mickey Fitzpatrick in “Long Bright River” is a cop who’s protective of the prostitutes on her beat; Henry’s Ray Driscoll in “Dope Thief” is an ex-con who robs drug houses by pretending to be a federal agent.Under the surface, though, the two natives of northern Philadelphia are haunted by similar family traumas, seen in copious flashbacks (fathers figure heavily). And as a result each is in need of redemption and transformation, which is the real through line of each series.They get there in very dissimilar ways, however. “Long Bright River,” which plays like a companion piece to the heavy-going “Mare of Easttown,” is a family soap opera onto which a procedural serial-killer mystery has been grafted. “Dope Thief” is a hyperbolic, postmodern thriller in the guise of a hard-boiled mystery. Personal taste may largely determine which one you respond to, but here’s a tip: If humor counts for anything, then “Dope Thief,” which consistently cuts its angst and violence with reasonably clever, farcical comedy, is the much better use of eight hours.In “Long Bright River,” Mickey is a single mother with a preternaturally precocious 8-year-old, Thomas (the very charming Callum Vinson); her only family support, if you can call it that, comes from her abrasive grandfather (John Doman). When women on her beat begin to turn up dead at the same time that her estranged sister, Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings), goes missing, Mickey starts her own off-the-books investigation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tramell Tillman of ‘Severance’ Gives Himself a Performance Review

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      This interview contains spoilers from Season 2, Episode 5 of “Severance.”It’s hard to imagine Seth Milchick being late for anything.The manager of the “severed” floor in Apple TV+’s darkly satirical workplace thriller “Severance,” Mr. Milchick, as he is mostly known, is the consummate company man. He is a silky-voiced, coldhearted enforcer and is punctilious to the point of menace.Much less is known about the actor who plays him, Tramell Tillman. Before “Severance,” his résumé consisted mostly of minor TV roles and theater. So when he agreed to meet on a recent weekday afternoon at Manhattanville Coffee, near his apartment in Upper Manhattan, I couldn’t help but half expect him to be waiting for me there, hands folded on the table, wearing a mouth-only smile that barely cloaked his disappointment that I hadn’t shown up earlier.Instead something much more charming, less android-like, had happened: Tillman had gone to the wrong Washington Heights location of Manhattanville.He texted: “I’ll come to you.” Ten minutes later, he blew in the door, apologetic as he unwrapped himself from a thick scarf, ski cap and tan utility jacket. “My bad,” he said. “It’s been a crazy week.”One got the impression it had been a crazy few years for Tillman since the debut of his breakout role in “Severance,” a disturbingly allegorical sci-fi series that follows a group of workers who have had their consciousness “severed” into discrete work and home selves. The show was an instant cultural phenomenon, and a critical darling, when it premiered in 2022 — a particularly claustrophobic time for many, when distinctions between home and office life were rapidly collapsing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Mythic Quest’ Is Only the Start of Her Real-Life Journey

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      Season 4 of the Apple series has Charlotte Nicdao’s character branching out in new directions. The actress is doing likewise, including as a director.Set in a video game studio, the sitcom “Mythic Quest” is full of eccentric workaholics. But none are more frantic, frenzied or anxious than Poppy Li, played by Charlotte Nicdao.A prodigious but petulant engineer, Poppy is given to meltdowns and primal screams, many stemming from a war of wills with her egomaniacal, codependent business partner, Ian Grimm, played by Rob McElhenney. (McElhenney created the show with Charlie Day and Megan Ganz, who also work with him on “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”)Over three seasons, Nicdao has viewed her character as everything from a “lovable underdog” to an unprintable descriptor. These days she’s looking favorably upon her geeky, gawky enfant terrible thanks to a paradigm shift in the fourth season, which debuted this week on Apple TV+. (Note the premiere episode is entitled “Boundaries.”)“There’s always this power imbalance between Poppy and Ian — like, who’s the queen, who’s the king?” Nicdao said. “This season, Poppy has got more power, there’s no question. But it’s not in the ways that you’d expect.”“Mythic Quest” is the first major American series for Nicdao, who grew up and still lives in Australia. Previously a classical pianist, singer and orchestral clarinetist, she started acting in high school productions and began her TV career at 17 on an Australian kids’ show. (Her father, Alfred Nicdao, is a well-known actor in Australia.)Nicdao with Rob McElhenney, a creator of the series who also plays her egomaniacal business partner at the video game company where they work.Patrick McElhenneyApple TV+We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Agency’ and ‘Black Doves’: Spy Dramas in Touch With Their Feelings

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      ‘The Agency’ and ‘Black Doves’ are part of a new crop of espionage series whose biggest battles take place within the hearts and minds of their agents.Ukraine and Russia are at war. Political instability and civil war rage in Sudan. Iran is ramping up its nuclear capabilities. The world is basically a mess in “The Agency,” the new espionage series that inundates the viewer with rapidly intersecting story lines set on an increasingly complicated geopolitical playing field.The series, which premiered last week on Paramount+ (with the Showtime tier), is part of a surge in spy shows that also includes “The Day of the Jackal,” on Peacock; “Black Doves,” premiering Dec. 5 on Netflix; and “Slow Horses,” which wrapped up its fourth season on Apple TV+ this fall.True to the genre, these series jet all over the globe (though mostly Europe) and unfold in high-tech command centers and in dark urban alleyways, via thrilling shootouts and furtive meetups. Some operatives pursue sanctioned missions as others go rogue. Multiple cats chase multiple mice, and it’s not always clear who is which.The most pitched battles, however, happen within the hearts and minds of the individual players. Even as the new spy shows reflect a fraught, tangled and mercenary post-Cold War world, the existential threats and conflicts are more interior, intimate and, in many ways, timeless.“It’s the agency,” a Central Intelligence Agency honcho (Jeffrey Wright) tells a field agent (Michael Fassbender) in “The Agency.” “Nothing is personal.” Nothing, that is, except everything.Jeffrey Wright, right, with John Magaro, plays a C.I.A. boss in “The Agency,” based on the French series “The Bureau.”Luke Varley/Paramount+ with ShowtimeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Midnight Family’ Is a Fresh and Energetic Medical Drama

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      Set among a family of private ambulance drivers in Mexico City, the Apple TV+ series is a thoughtful and cinematic adaptation of a 2019 documentary.“Midnight Family,” on Apple TV+, is a Mexican drama (in Spanish, with subtitles or dubbed) about a family that runs a private ambulance. There aren’t enough ambulances for all the emergencies in Mexico City, so bootleg paramedics blare their own sirens and pitch in.Our heroine is Marigaby (Renata Vaca), who splits her time between medical school and working with her father and brothers on the ambulance. She is passionate about medicine but spread awfully thin — eager to keep the hands-on rush of in-the-field emergency care but desperate to be a proper doctor. She is tired of being looked down on by hospital employees, tired of having to solicit payments from patients mid-ride.Her older brother, Marcus (Diego Calva), likes the ambulance fine but mostly thinks about his girlfriend. Her little brother, Julito (Sergio Bautista), is just a kid, but he handles all the crises with precocious aplomb. Her father (Joaquín Cosío) does not take great care of himself and relies on Julito for probably too much. Her mother (Dolores Heredia) is warily inching her way back into the picture.The show is based on a 2019 documentary of the same name, but the vibe of this TV adaptation is less gritty realism than just solid medical drama. Episode 3, about the 2017 earthquake that killed hundreds of people, has both a bleak, broad grounding and also a weepy individual through line, as all good natural disaster episodes do. Mercifully, this is fresher and more energetic than contemporary network doctor shows and also more cinematic. The nighttime color palate glows, sometimes radiating warmth but other times emitting a kind of woozy menace. Scenes set in traffic don’t feel too phony baloney, even if some characters feel pat.Like many other medical dramas, the show gets flabbier the farther it gets from the hospital, or in this case, the ambulance. The domestic plotlines are a mixed bag: Marcus’s relationship woes are not hugely compelling, though the potential for rekindled romance between the separated parents has a fraught charm.There are graver sins than being reminiscent of “Grey’s Anatomy,” though the pointed voice-overs and rule-breaking romances here add to the similarities. If “Midnight” is a little predictable, so be it; it’s still quite a ride. More

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      Season 2 of ‘Bad Sisters’ Is Still Stylish and Thrilling

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      There is a sense, however, that the most important events in this offbeat Apple TV+ drama happened in Season 1.Season 2 of “Bad Sisters” (two episodes of which are available now, on Apple TV+) arrives after a two-year break, but the plots and pressures are driven completely by the action of the first season. The Garvey sisters are still recalibrating their lives after the secret murder of one sister’s monstrous husband, J.P., a slimy abuser who deserved every bad thing that came his way. But secrets are only ever buried alive — and as any fan of the lurid knows, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.When the season begins, Eva (Sharon Horgan, also a creator and executive producer) has a menopause coach and a pep in her step. Ursula (Eva Birthistle), a nurse, is now thoroughly divorced and co-parenting. Bibi (Sarah Greene), the one with the eye patch, and her wife are preparing for fertility treatments, while Becka (Eve Hewson) has a bro-y new boyfriend. And Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), whose now-dead husband was the source of so much suffering, is getting married to the handsome Ian (Owen McDonnell), who even gets along well with her teenage daughter, Blanaid (Saise Quinn).The central villain of Season 1 has been dispatched, so there’s a new antagonist; this time instead of a smarmy rapist, it’s a pushy busybody named Angelica (Fiona Shaw), identified onscreen as “the Wagon.” That’s Irish slang for … uh … a woman everyone really likes and respects and gets along with. As with Season 1, the true evil is not one individual but rather misogyny.“I’m a woman of the church,” Angelica tells her brother, Roger (Michael Smiley), the neighbor who helped Grace and is haunted by his role in the crime. “I’m in the guilt industry. I know guilt when I see it.” She has plenty to turn her attention to, then, and she wastes no time. Guilt is a constant companion here, a mechanism for control both in broader society and on an individual basis, and we see characters sacrifice more and more of themselves to managing its burden.A lot of what made Season 1 such a thrill is intact here: The show remains pointed and stylish, and the chemistry among the sisters — and their not-quite-matching, not-quite-not-matching costumes — is its most exciting, endearing element. But “Sisters” can’t escape the sense of rehash, the fact that all the most important things have already happened, the biggest bombs have already detonated, the most chilling secrets have already been exposed.Despite a huge, brutal twist early in the season, these additional episodes aren’t deeper or more special and specific than the first season’s. The opening credits this go-round use the same song as the first but set up a new macabre Rube Goldberg machine, and that’s kind of how the whole season feels, like a code you already have the key to.Season 2 has eight episodes, and new installments arrive on Wednesdays. More

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      For One of the ‘Bad Sisters,’ Things Have Gotten Even Worse

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      Anne-Marie Duff, who won a BAFTA for her performance in this black comedy last season, discusses her character’s darker turn in Season 2.This article includes spoilers for the first two episodes of the new season of “Bad Sisters.”The first time Anne-Marie Duff applied to drama school in London, it turned her away. When she applied a second time, she received a spot on the wait-list, and she called the school every day until it admitted her.“I think they just gave me a place to shut me up,” said Duff, the 54-year-old actress who describes herself as “London Irish.”Tenacity and grit characterize many of the women Duff has portrayed throughout her decades-long career, including the indomitable Fiona Gallagher in the British version of “Shameless” and the headstrong Queen Elizabeth I in the BBC mini-series “The Virgin Queen.”But those qualities are particularly evident in Duff’s depiction of Grace Williams, the troubled housewife at the center of an elaborate whodunit in the Apple TV+ black comedy “Bad Sisters.”For much of the first season, Grace trembles under the heavy hand of her husband, John Paul (Claes Bang), a jerk known by an unprintable nickname to her sisters. But beneath her timid exterior and obsequious demeanor, frustration builds and boils as her husband belittles and badgers her — until she finally erupts in a climactic scene that ends with her strangling him.Duff’s performance won her best supporting actress at the EE British Academy Film Awards and helped secure a second season of the show, which had a two-episode premiere on Wednesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More