Chad Powers: Glen Powell and Eli Manning’s football comedy is a lesser wannabe Ted Lasso

Stop us if this starts to sound familiar.

There’s a new American TV comedy about an underdog sports personality who finds himself in a strange situation with a fresh group of people, and the idea for the story originated in a comedy sketch.

If that sounds like Ted Lasso, you’d be correct. If it also sounds like Chad Powers, you’d also be correct.

Chad Powers, which debuted this week, is a six-episode comedy starring Glen Powell as a washed-up gridiron football star named Russ Holliday, whose career tanked after a very public humiliation.

He didn’t handle the aftermath well, and given his arrogance and entitlement, he found life as a has-been a very cold place.

Then two things happen – he sees a video in which the coach of a college football team in south Georgia (the US state, not the birthplace of Joseph Stalin) is holding open try-outs for a new quarterback.

He also happens to have in his possession, a bunch of wigs and prosthetics belonging to his father (Toby Huss), a Hollywood make-up artists.

It’s absolutely a cockbrained idea that would never, ever work in any world other than on TV or in a movie. Russ drives himself down to Georgia, slaps on the disguise and invents Chad Powers, wannabe football star.

Russ has a killer arm and makes it onto the team, and now has to keep his identity a secret from everyone including head coach Jake (Steve Zahn) and assistant coach Ricky (Perry Mattfield), who also happens to be the head coach’s daughter.

The one person who immediately sees through him is Danny (Frankie Rodriguez), the team’s mascot, who becomes Russ’s confidant and helper in pulling off this massive deception.

There are definite parallels between Chad Powers and Ted Lasso beyond their origins as comedy sketches expanded into full-blown shows. It’s a tone thing as well. Chad Powers is also trying to hit that balance between goofy comedy with warmth and a story about redemption.

That is the Ted Lasso effect. The Jason Sudeikis show was such a sensation during Covid – the second season more than the first, it took a beat for a wider audience to find it – because its feel-good story brought something people felt was lacking, compassion.

But because it blew up, Hollywood did what Hollywood does, it went looking for facsimiles. Every studio, including Apple which had the original hit, wanted another or their own version of something in the Lasso vein.

Given the length of pitch and production cycles, what you’re seeing now is the fruits of those labours. It’s why there was that Owen Wilson golf comedy, Stick, and the Kate Hudson basketball comedy, Running Point, and the upcoming Will Ferrell golf comedy, creatively titled Golf.

You just know that somewhere, there’s a pickleball comedy pitch that is about to be greenlit.

Chad Powers has its moments, and Powell has oodles of charm (which it sometimes hides with Chad’s weedy in-disguise voice) in this story centred on how a former bad boy can find renewed purpose by becoming someone else.

There are emotional beats here worth exploring, which it leaves a little too late in the episode count.

But there is also, if you’re not a sports fan, too much football, especially in those early episodes. The key to any sports movie or show is to be sparing with the actual sport. A lot of the audience does not care about the play-by-play, they’re here for the underdog story of the characters.

Ted Lasso knew it, and you, like its title character, can watch all three seasons without ever understanding what offside is.

Chad Powers is fine and inoffensive, but it’s also less than. Less than Ted Lasso. Less than original.

Chad Powers is streaming on Disney+ with new episodes weekly