5 Apple TV Shows Way Better Than Ted Lasso

When "Ted Lasso" hit Apple TV in August of 2020, the world was starved for joy; it was the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, and because a vaccine wasn't widely available yet at that time, everyone was still stuck inside under a worldwide quarantine. Unable to hang out with friends indoors, everyone was glued to their TVs — that explains how "Tiger King" became a worldwide phenomenon, for one thing — and it feels like we all watched "Ted Lasso," a Bill Lawrence soccer comedy centered around a silly character that star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis made up previously as a bit for NBC Sports. As a reminder, the show follows Ted, who travels from Kansas to England to coach a football team despite knowing nothing about British football. So is "Ted Lasso" ... good?!

We've investigated the quality of "Ted Lasso" before right here at Looper, something that became necessary after the show's third season felt like a pathetic, bizarre, and pale imitation of its former glory. (That glory is indisputable when you consider that the first season won a whole armload of Emmys.) It feels unfair to say "Ted Lasso" was never good and we were all just duped by its cheerfulness during a terrible time in the world, but here's a stone-cold fact: there are a lot of shows on Apple TV that are much, much better.

Apple TV, frankly, has some of the best shows on streaming and people keep failing to notice; if you bring up the streamer in public, you'll probably get asked if you watch "Ted Lasso" instead of any of its other worthy shows. So what should you watch instead of "Ted Lasso?" We have some ideas. Here are five Apple TV shows that are better than "Ted Lasso."

It's ironic that, on a list of shows better than "Ted Lasso," we've included a different show helmed by creator Bill Lawrence ... but his series "Shrinking" blows "Ted Lasso" out of the water, if we're being honest. This show, which Lawrence crafted alongside his "Ted Lasso" star Brett Goldstein (who plays the irascible Roy Kent on the sports show) and Jason Segel, is led by Segel as therapist Jimmy Laird, a therapist who's grieving the death of his wife and struggling as a single parent to his daughter Alice ("Backrooms" standout Lukita Maxwell). Jimmy, trying to shake himself out of a rut, decides to start dealing with his patients a little bit differently and just tells them what to do — a big no-no in the world of therapy — much to the chagrin of his professional mentor Dr. Paul Rhoades (living legend Harrison Ford) and friend and colleague Gaby Evans ("The Daily Show" alum Jessica Williams).

Thanks to Segel's heartfelt lead performance as Jimmy and the truly outstanding supporting cast — Ford is always excellent, and Williams, Maxwell, Michael Urie, Lawrence's real-life wife Christa Miller, and Ted McGinley are all fantastic as well — "Shrinking" is a better show than "Ted Lasso," largely because it's more consistent and has a clearer vision. Sorry, "Ted Lasso," but your dad's other kid is cooler than you are.

Francesca Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller's uproariously funny Apple TV series "Platonic" centers on — you guessed it — a delightful platonic friendship between Will (Seth Rogen) and Sylvia (Rose Byrne), who reconnect after several years. (It's also a nice reunion between Rogen and Byrne, who appeared together as a husband and wife living next door to a noisy fraternity in the raunchy 2014 comedy "Neighbors" and its 2016 sequel). After Will gets divorced, he and Sylvia become friends again — slightly baffling Sylvia's husband Charlie (Luke Macfarlane), and throughout "Platonic," they get into all sorts of adventures together.

Rogen and Byrne are just absolutely delightful together — which you know if you've seen the "Neighbors" movies — and Byrne, a 2026 Oscar nominee for "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You," is one of the funniest actresses working today and rarely gets enough credit for that. (Frankly, she should already have an Oscar for the 2015 Paul Feig parody movie "Spy." Nobody has ever been that funny while wearing that big of a wig.) Watching Rogen and Byrne play genuinely non-romantic best friends, drink, do drugs, and cause chaos together is delightful; frankly, these two could read the phone book and make it entertaining. The friendships and connections on "Ted Lasso" are pretty great, but none of them come close to the bond between Sylvia and Will on "Platonic."

From the mind of "Parks and Recreation" writer Katie Dippold — the woman behind one of the funniest viral social media posts of all time, mind you — "Widow's Bay" is one of the most pleasant surprises on Apple TV, because it's just so good. The first season of "Widow's Bay" hit the streamer in 2026 and introduced audiences to the titular island, which, if you ask the intrepid mayor of "Widow's Bay," Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is definitely not haunted. (It's for sure haunted.) Despite townspeople like the erratic Wyck Crawford (character actor Stephen Root, always welcome) insisting that there's a curse on Widow's Bay — a curse that specifically affects anyone born on the island that won't let them leave — Tom, who's desperate to increase tourism on the small island, remains steadfast in his insistence that nothing is wrong at all.

Thanks to the performances from Rhys, Root, the absolutely unbelievable Kate O'Flynn as Tom's bizarre assistant Patricia Moyer, and small-screen staple Dale Dickey as local government employee Rosemary — as well as careful direction from Hiro Murai — "Widow's Bay" is a near-perfect show. At times, it feels like a miracle that a show this original and this good even made it to air. Dippold's show is a true original, and even if "Ted Lasso" is technically an original concept, "Widow's Bay" runs circles around the soccer comedy. (Be prepared for jump scares, though. There are a lot of jump scares, even though some of them are actually just really funny.)

Yes, Seth Rogen is on this list twice — but he deserves it, because he stars on two of Apple TV's very best shows. "The Studio," which kicked off in 2025, is a fast-paced, hilarious, and thought-provoking study of Hollywood — created by Rogen, his long-time creative partner Evan Goldberg, and Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory, and Frida Perez — that stars Rogen as Matt Remick, an executive who gets his dream promotion and is given the keys to Continental Studios as its new leader. Flanked by his best friend and vice president of production Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz), PR maven Maya Mason (a perfectly deployed Kathryn Hahn), and ambitious junior executive Quinn Hackett (Chase Sui Wonders), Matt desperately tries to strike a balance between creating great art and making a profit, only to discover that those two things don't often go hand in hand.

From an entire episode where Matt, Quinn, Sal, and Maya feverishly try to cast a Kool-Aid movie to celebrity cameos galore — Martin Scorsese cries, Ron Howard has a rage-fueled meltdown, and Olivia Wilde "destroys" her own film negatives — "The Studio" is a pitch-perfect satire of Hollywood. The only difficult thing about it is that the late, great Catherine O'Hara originated the role of former studio head Patty Leigh in Season 1 and then passed away in January 2026; the show is still great, but it was made better by her presence.

"Severance" might not be the first Apple TV series you think of when you think of a "comedy," but anyone who's watched Dan Erickson's unsettling workplace drama knows that the show is often darkly hilarious — in large part thanks to the lead performance from comedy powerhouse Adam Scott. On the series (much of which is directed by Ben Stiller), Scott plays Mark Scout, a woman grieving the death of his wife who decides to undergo the titular procedure as an eligible employee of Lumon Industries. After he becomes "severed," Mark S., his "innie," does his job in the macrodata refinement department at Lumon, while Mark Scout exists in the "real" world as an "outie" who has no knowledge of anything his innie does at Lumon.

In Macrodata Refinement, Mark S. is flanked by his coworkers Irving B. (John Turturro) and Dylan G. (Zach Cherry), all of whom are joined by the rebellious Helly R. (Britt Lower) in Season 1 and who are all led by middle manager Seth Milchick (Tramell Tillman) and his boss Harmony Cobel (Patricia Arquette). Across two seasons, "Severance" has proven to be a seriously unsettling show, but it also has strange, silly moments of levity, whether the main foursome are attending a mandatory dance party in Season 1 or Mark is wryly interrogating Harmony as his outie in Season 2. "Severance" is a great show, and sorry — it's a lot better than "Ted Lasso."

With all of that said, "Ted Lasso" is streaming on Apple TV ... but so are these other, better shows.