He shouldn't really work as a TV hero: relentlessly cheerful, terribly earnest, and armed with awful jokes. Yet somehow, Ted Lasso does.

After more than three years away, Ted Lasso is back. The mustache remains, the terrible jokes haven't improved, and judging by the opening episodes of Season 4, neither has Ted's habit of walking into other people's lives and somehow leaving them a little better than he found them.

This time, he's returning to Richmond to coach the club's new women's team, after Rebecca, Keeley and Higgins travel to Kansas City to persuade him back across the Atlantic. It's a new challenge for a character who arrived in England knowing remarkably little about soccer in the first place, but then football has never really been the reason many of us watched Ted Lasso.

What makes him so appealing is harder to pin down. He's relentlessly cheerful, but the series has never pretended that cheerfulness means an easy life. We've watched him struggle with the breakdown of his marriage, panic attacks, loneliness and the complicated legacy of losing his father to suicide. Sometimes that sunny disposition is clearly doing rather more work than Ted would like anyone to notice. Yet somehow, pain doesn't make him hard.

Instead, Ted remains almost stubbornly interested in other people. He remembers the person everyone else overlooks. He turns up each morning with homemade biscuits for a woman who, unbeknownst to him, originally hired him hoping he would fail. He gives second chances rather more readily than most of us would, and seems remarkably reluctant to reduce anyone to their worst behavior.

Jason Sudeikis has said that this was deliberate. When 60 Minutes asked about creating a character whose kindness could bring out the best in people, Sudeikis described Ted as "kindhearted" and said that aspect of the character was "100% intentional." Given the choice, he added: "I'd much rather try to view the world, you know, as Ted Lasso."

One of Ted's best-known pieces of advice is “Be curious, not judgmental.” The show attributes the phrase to Walt Whitman — although there's no evidence Whitman actually said it — but whoever coined it, Ted lives by it. Curiosity asks another question before reaching a conclusion. It leaves room for the difficult colleague to be struggling, the arrogant young man to be frightened, or the person who has hurt us to become someone different. And that's considerably harder than being nice.

Anyone can smile at someone they like. Ted's real gift is maintaining his generosity towards people who have disappointed, underestimated, or even betrayed him. When one character he has encouraged eventually turns against him and publicly exposes his struggles with panic attacks, Ted is deeply hurt. Yet he never seems particularly interested in revenge, and when that person eventually recognizes what he has done, Ted leaves room for him to return.

That's where this very secular comedy brushes up against something profoundly Christian. Forgiveness doesn't require pretending that someone hasn't behaved badly. Christianity simply refuses to accept that a human being should forever be defined by the worst thing they've done. And Ted, underneath the mustache and relentless supply of terrible jokes, seems to understand that remarkably well.

Television has given us plenty of brilliant antiheroes, acid-tongued geniuses and characters whose chief attraction is their ability to produce a devastating comeback three seconds faster than everyone else. Ted is unusual because the writers allow goodness to be interesting.

He's not naive because he hasn't encountered suffering. He's kind despite having encountered it. And his kindness is never terribly solemn. It comes with homemade biscuits, dreadful puns and an impressive ability to keep believing in people long after most of us might have given up.

That's what we've missed while Ted has been away. Not the football, not even the mustache (well... ) , but watching someone move through a complicated world without allowing it to make him hard.

Ted Lasso doesn't always know what he's doing — particularly where soccer is concerned — but he keeps showing up, keeps noticing people and keeps leaving room for them to surprise him. And if all else fails, there are always biscuits!

And if you've never watched Ted Lasso, consider this a hearty recommendation -- with the small warning that its big heart comes with some rather colorful language.