Filming of the fourth season of Ted Lasso is currently underway in the scenic streets of Richmond in London’s south west… but has the charm of having one of the biggest TV shows of recent years filmed within its leafy confines worn off for locals?
Despite the show’s creators, including Jason Sudeikis, who plays the sports-comedy drama’s title role, claiming the third season would be its last, a new series is, much to the delight of fans, incoming in 2026.
This week has seen the Ted Lasso circus roll into town once more as film crews capture scenes on and around Richmond Green, close to the narrow alleyway of Paved Court, where US football coach Ted’s flat is situated in the show.
Actors, including Sudeikis, 50, were spotted outside the Crown and Anchor pub – known in real life as The Prince’s Head, this week.
They were surrounded by dozens of film crew, extras and eagle-eyed observers keen to catch a glimpse of a superstar cast that also includes British stars Hannah Waddingham and Brett Goldstein.
While the cast and crew will be gone within days, the Ted Lasso effect very much remains present, and has completely transformed the quiet passageway that was picked by the show’s location scouts back in 2019.
In historic Paved Court, the nods to the soccer coach protagonist can be seen everywhere.
There’s a colourful two-storey merchandise store now in place, selling replica AFC Richmond shirts and even £9.50 boxes of the shortbread Lasso makes in the show for club owner Rebecca Welton (Waddingham).
Paved Court, a tiny street in the pretty south-west London town of Richmond has been transformed since Apple TV+ show Ted Lasso began using it as a key location (Pictured: Brendan Hunt, left, Jason Sudeikis, right)
The Prince’s Head in Richmond doubles up as the Crown and Anchor pub in the show and has become a magnet for tourists since the show began filming in Richmond in 2019
On the same stretch, many of the stores, which includes an Italian sandwich shop, hairdressers and jewellers, have also put up photos of the show or display Ted Lasso themed items in their windows.
This week, the daughter of a former proprietor of the shop admitted she wasn’t impressed with the fact the merchandise store was now in the humble lending library her mother and grandmother once ran in the mid 1930s.
She wrote: It’s a shame that the old property seems to have lost its soul and I for one, won’t be visiting.’
There’s a steady stream of tourists, many from the US, year-round, with the street often crowded as Instagrammers take a photo of the tiny flat at 9 and a 1/2 Paved Court where Ted lives in the show.
While the hit Apple TV+ show has dramatically increased footfall at the Crown and Anchor pub too, there are some who yearn for when it was just a regular Richmond boozer rather than a Hollywood-esque tourist attraction.
The two-storey Ted Lasso store which has opened on narrow Paved Court in a bid to capitalise on the thousands of TV fans who make a pilgrimage here to spy the show’s locations
On Facebook, one critic of the apparent Ted Lasso takeover wrote: ‘Poor locals, can’t have a quiet drink, ffs.’
Others have bemoaned the lack of parking in the area, with one saying filming days made it harder for residents, writing: ‘Couldn’t find one parking space on Monday, now I know why?’
Another admitted that Richmond’s ongoing Ted Lasso cameo was becoming tiresome, six years on from the series first being shot in the area.
They wrote: ‘Get a bit fed up with the disturbance that we endure with all the filming – ‘fanfare’ – but we are lucky to be local to such a nice area.’
Last spring saw a regal house close to the pub go up for sale, with some suggesting that the inhabitants were irritated by the constant stream of TV fans gathering on their doorstep.
The Grade II Listed Georgian was marketed at £4.5million, thanks to its plum spot looking out across Richmond Green, once a jousting ground to the former Richmond Palace and now home to summertime cricket matches.
However, it seems a buyer wasn’t found and the property was later taken off the market.
Back in Richmond: Jason Sudeikis pictured in September filming scenes for season four
While Ted Lasso is set in Richmond, it was dreamed up in a small comedy club in Amsterdam.
Back in 2001, Jason and co-creator Brendan Hunt were both performing at an improv comedy club in the Dutch capital, called Boom Chicago.
While living in the Netherlands city, Brendan became enthralled with European soccer, and he tried to share his newfound obsession with Jason.
The only problem was, Jason knew nothing about the sport – so the two decided to start playing the popular video game FIFA together while Brendan attempted to teach the actor the rules of soccer.
Not only did his plan work – Jason learned everything he needed to know from the game – but their video game sessions also resulted in tons of laughs for the duo, and the idea for the premise of the show was soon hatched.
The Los Angeles Times reported that no American had ever managed a European soccer team before, and the two started thinking about how funny it might be if someone like Jason gave it a go in real life rather than in a video game. But their idea wouldn’t actually come to life on the screen for many more years to come.
It wasn’t until Jason was hired by NBC to play a soccer coach in a series of commercial for the Premier League in 2013 that he and Brendan decided to turn their video game endeavors into a show.
After the success of the advertisements, Jason and Brendan, along with TV producer Joe Kelly, decided to write a script in which they took the character from the adverts and the idea they had years earlier and combined them to create the first season of Ted Lasso.
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