Ted Lasso

You’ve seen the show, now book the trip. Coming soon to screens worldwide is an advertising campaign for UK tourism, featuring some of the best-known TV and film locations on our sceptred isles.

“Starring GREAT Britain” will be launched in January by VisitBritain, whose job is to attract international visitors. It is spending several million pounds to cash in on a boom in “set-jetting” – marketing-speak for location tourism. It will focus on TV shows sold globally, featuring places recognised by international audiences.

The show follows Anna Samson (Wake in Fright) as DI Mackenzie Clarke, an Australian ex-pat working for the London Metropolitan Police. When she gets accused of evidence tampering, the detective makes a return down under to her hometown, Dolphin Cove.

Russell Tovey (Being Human) and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Loki) will star in the five-part series, created by Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies. Davies co-wrote the show with Peter McTighe, who has also written for the long running sci-fi staple.

Jemma Redgrave (Grantchester) will reprise her Doctor Who role as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, commander-in-chief of military outfit UNIT, while Alexander Devrient (Ted Lasso) will return as Colonel Ibrahim.

The eponymous Douglas (Bonneville) is an esteemed news presenter who finds himself in the middle of a social media storm after telling an off-colour joke at a wedding.

“It was sexist, not misogynist!” an exasperated Douglas insists in the trailer.

Though initially on good terms with co-anchor Madeline (Gillan), Douglas’s wife Sheila (Alex Kingston) warns him that his colleague isn’t always to be trusted.

Two statistics released in recent months have made people sit up and pay attention to the burgeoning progress made by the streaming service Apple TV+. In May, the Jason Sudeikis-fronted football comedy drama, Ted Lasso, became the first Apple show to feature in Barb’s SVoD average UK monthly audience top 20.

It came in at number 18, with around 963,000 viewers – well below the most-watched (Netflix’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, seen by around 3 million) but a milestone nonetheless.

Emma, Oti and Rylan’s Red Nose Day Challenge

Tuesday

BBC One, 9pm

Apple also posted the first image from the series, which sees Ted (Jason Sudeikis) face off with Nate (Nick Mohammed) at West Ham, the club owned by AFC Richmond's owner Rebecca Welton's (Hannah Waddingham) vindictive ex-husband Rupert (Anthony Head), who watches on in the background. It's captioned: "Time to win the whole f***ing thing."

The tense meeting looks to follow on from the events of series two's finale, which saw a frustrated Nate shock fans by switching allegiances from Richmond to West Ham.

It’s odd to think now but, before kicking off on Apple TV+, you may not have bet on football comedy drama Ted Lasso as a winner.  

Originally, Jason Sudeikis’s loveable Mr Nice Guy character fronted a US advertising campaign. As an American football coach turned “head coach of Tottenham Spurs” [sic], his cheerful cluelessness about the beautiful game made him ideal to bring soccer to American culture and thus promote NBC’s Premier League coverage back in 2013.  

In Treatment

Monday

Sky Atlantic, 9pm

Here are some of our favourites. 

Loki

Disney Plus, episodes released every Wednesday  

Continuing the story of one of Marvel’s most troublesome characters, Loki, known as the God of Mischief, is back to cause trouble.