A down-on-their-luck football (read: soccer) team faces relegation. If they don’t start winning games, they’ll be demoted out of their league, paid less, and, ultimately, have a lesser shot of getting new opportunities in the sport. In order to rev the team up, new management takes over—but everyone’s still a little bit wary of the future.
The above could describe either Ted Lasso or Welcome to Wrexham. They’re the exact same show.
It is impossible to talk about Welcome to Wrexham without mentioning Ted Lasso. Just look at the headline of this article! Trying to explain the plot of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s new FX on Hulu docuseries without dropping the words “real-life Ted Lasso” is like watching “Try Not To Laugh” YouTube video. Again, the shows are the same—the only difference is that this version isn’t fictional.
Never once while watching Ted Lasso did I think to myself, “Wow, someone should actually try this out.” With hokey jokes, manufactured love triangles, and heartwarming endings, Ted Lasso is really good at what it does: making people feel good. Sure, it’s overly saccharine at points. But that doesn’t mean I won’t tune in nightly to Season 3. The point here, though, is that Ted Lasso is good at being a fictional TV show.
But Welcome to Wrexham decides to take on the challenge of making Ted Lasso into a real thing. Then it asks, “What if, instead of chipper Ted and gruff Rebecca, the two people in charge were chiseled, dry-humored men?”
McElhenney tries to explain this dream of his in the first episode of Welcome to Wrexham, but it gets a little lost in the mix. He wants to buy an AFC team (a pro soccer team), specifically the Wrexham team located out of Wales. There’s just something about Wrexham, McElhenney proclaims. It reminds him of his hometown, Philadelphia.
Though he’s a fan favorite on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and his own Apple TV+ show Mythic Quest is an underrated hit, McElhenney admits that he doesn’t have enough star power (or money) to buy a football team, even one as low on the roster as Wrexham AFC. Cut to: Ryan Reynolds recording ADR for The Adam Project on his iPhone. Yes, his iPhone. A little-known fact about Netflix’s The Adam Project is that Ryan Reynolds’ iPhone was a key production tool.
Goofy parts like this, where Reynolds and McElhenney get to banter and be so weird with each other, make Welcome to Wrexham worth watching. The pair met in the way our parents told us not to: on the internet. They’d been following one another for a while, interacting here and there, and for some reason, this led to McElhenney’s bonkers idea: What if Ryan Reynolds bought Wrexham AFC besides him? The rest is history.
Some of the McElhenney/Reynolds bits do feel a bit too manufactured, but the scenes that take place in Wrexham make up for this. If you enjoyed Ted Lasso, but still found yourself confused by all the football talk, Welcome to Wrexham doesn’t leave you googling “what is the premiere league soccer britain.” The series breaks down the Premier League and every tier below it, also explaining common Welsh/English terms, football lingo, and more.
It is a docuseries, after all: You’re going to be walked through every part of the British football leagues. But I did find it refreshing, after watching shows like Industry, Succession, and yes, even Ted Lasso, that frequently make me pause to Google terminology. I’m here for the stakes of the game, but I also want to know what’s going on. So, along with being a diet Ted Lasso, Welcome to Wrexham will make Ted Lasso Season 3 just a little easier to understand.
The show works in tandem with McElhenney/Reynolds (they’re not actually in Wrexham, just watching from afar) and the Wrexham team, showcasing what’s happening across the pond in each episode. Both stories are fun—but the problem then becomes bridging the actual soccer with the team’s superstar owners. It feels like there are two shows happening simultaneously. While we learn about the scrappy footballers of Wrexham, we quickly pivot to millionaires watching them from their pristine mansions. It’s an unsettling jump.
With Ted Lasso, that divide becomes less of a big deal, as Ted (Jason Sudeikis) himself is poised as an underdog. As he faces a divorce, misses his son, and struggles to make allies on the team, we feel for Ted just as we feel for AFC Richmond. But because Welcome to Wrexham is a docuseries, it can’t stage its two leads as underdogs. We are forced to take them as they are: rich, successful movie stars with questionable motives.
Another concept to consider is that while Welcome to Wrexham will be pegged to Ted Lasso for its entire run, Ted Lasso won’t be attached to Welcome to Wrexham. Welcome to Wrexham is the afterthought of Ted Lasso. While it’s unclear whether or not Welcome to Wrexham would have even existed in a landscape without Ted Lasso, both shows have referenced one another.
In the middle of Ted Lasso Season 2, puppy-loving assistant Higgins (Jeremy Swift) references the fact that the “Hollywood magnates” sought to purchase AFC Richmond before landing on Wrexham. This cannot be true, because Richmond is not a real AFC team; however, the play bridges both series in a bonkers British football TV universe.
Which is why, although it will never top the giddiness of Ted Lasso, Welcome to Wrexham is still a worthwhile investment. Sure, Reynolds and McElhenney are blatantly capitalizing off the success of the Apple TV+ series. But who cares? They’re both fun to watch, and hopefully, they’ll continue to riff off one another.
If you found Ted Lasso too cloying to watch, Welcome to Wrexham might be more enjoyable, as it’s a less-dopey version of the same story. But all Ted Lasso viewers—or football/soccer fans in general—will appreciate Welcome to Wrexham as a pacifier while we wait for Season 3.
