‘What if Nora Ephron wrote a sports film?’: Ted Lasso and the intertextual frame of romantic comedy

Abstract

Co-creator of Ted Lasso (2020–23), Jason Sudeikis has summarized the Apple TV+ series as ‘what if Nora Ephron wrote a sports film?’ in an interview, opening it up to a close reading of how the dramedy uses popular texts of romantic comedy such as Ephron’s films When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You’ve Got Mail (1998), the Garry Marshall film Pretty Woman (1990), as well as the HBO series Sex and the City (1998–2004). The article highlights how this intertextuality (following Linda Hutcheon) is used to interrogate issues of personal growth, mental health and community over the expected heteronormative outcome of the romcom, subverting tropes. It further situates puts it into conversation with what Maria San Filippo has called the ‘post-theatrical romcom’ (2021) and Ephron’s idea of the ‘Jewish tradition’ of romantic comedy.