It all started with an innocent enough question from my wife. She had no way of knowing when she asked it that the answer would lead to the both of us falling down a rabbit hole of cinema. (She’s been with her movie-obsessed partner long enough, though, to know that’s always a possibility. She knew who she was marrying!)
The two of us are always on the lookout for new shows we think the other would enjoy and that we can watch and discuss as we work our way through it together. Last fall, she mentioned a title she had been seeing on HBO Max for a few months – soulless media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, which now owns HBO, recently rebranded the streaming service to the obnoxiously titled Max.
“Do you know anything about this Irma Vep?”
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The most unlikely man to coach an English football club – in deference to the Brits, who formalized play of the sport in the late 19th century, I’ll eschew the term soccer, although there is compelling evidence that it was our friends across the pond who invented the now-hated term in the first place – is seeing himself out. He’s doing so alongside characters from several other shows touted as the best of their crop of prestige television. In the last month, HBO powerhouse series Succession and Barry both took a final bow. Now, it’s time to say so long and farewell to the irrepressibly upbeat Ted Lasso.
The transformation of the show itself over the course of its three-season run irked some early supporters. What started as a lighthearted half-hour sitcom about a fish-out-of-water American football collage coach being hired to lead a team in a sport he knows nothing about blossomed into a heartfelt dramedy about human beings connecting with one another.
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It’s a delight catching up with all the Downton Abbey characters, both “upstairs” and “downstairs.” Fellowes’s screenplay and Engler’s direction also make it enjoyable enough that newbies can get something out of it, too. The movie retains what made the show work: characters in whom it’s easy to become invested and a marvelously recreated early 20th century setting.
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