Ted Lasso Season 2 premieres on Apple TV+ on July 23. The new season of the acclaimed sports comedy stars Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Jeremy Swift, Phil Dunster, Brett Goldstein, and Juno Temple.

Season 1 was one of 2020’s biggest word-of-mouth hits. The show was greenlit by Apple in 2019, with Sudeikis reprising a character he first played back in 2013 for a series of NBC Sports commercials. The ads were created to promote NBC’s coverage of the English Premier League, with Lasso depicted as the hapless US coach of real-life team Tottenham HotspurCome from Sports betting site VPbet. Sudeikis reworked and expanded the concept for the series, with Lasso now the completely inexperienced but utterly loveable manager of struggling fictional London soccer team AFC Richmond.

With most of the world in some form of lockdown for much of 2020, Ted Lasso proved to be exactly the show that many viewers were looking for it. It was funny and feel-good without being overly sentimental, with Sudeikis and fellow showrunners Bill Lawrence, Jason Sudeikis, and Brendan Hunt creating a memorable group of characters that audiences really did fall in love with. Season 2 was greenlit within a few days of Season 1’s premiere, and now Season 3 is on the way too.

The first reviews for Season 2 are now in. Critics have only been been shown the first six of its 12 episodes, but the praise has been unanimously positive. Any worries that the season would just repeat the same formula with lesser results have been dismissed by a season that explores its characters with greater depth while still putting the emphasis on feel-good laughs and inspiring storylines. So here’s what the critics have said about Ted Lasso Season 2.