Disney+ has just added a new show that feels like a darker, funnier Ted Lasso

Based on the most unlikely of sources, we think it's a surprise delight.

The rising acting star plays Russ Holliday, an extremely talented if arrogant college football quarterback with the world at his feet. He finds his professional sporting dreams dashed, however.

This is after he makes an embarrassing mistake during a game that costs his team the championship, and also becomes embroiled in a physical altercation with a fan that goes viral.

Unable to get signed following these incidents, Russ drifts for years as a notorious tabloid celebrity but still hungers to return to the world of football.

When he learns that the college team, the South Georgia Catfish, are hosting open tryouts for new players, Russ comes up with an audacious plan to get his sporting career back on track.

Inspired by the film Mrs Doubtfire (a very funny early joke) and stealing the equipment of his Hollywood make-up artist father (an always welcome Toby Huss, Weapons), Russ alters his appearance and poses as Chad Powers, a southern college student, so that he can try out for the Catfish.

Making the team and becoming one of its star players, how long can Russ keep up the lie, particularly when he must play ball covered in prosthetics that can't get wet?

Similar to the recent sports comedy sitcom Ted Lasso, Chad Powers has its basis in an earlier sketch. This was a segment of famed American football quarterback Eli Manning's show, Eli's Places, in which the sportsman went undercover at walk-on tryouts for Penn State, donning a disguise and calling himself Chad Powers.

When JOE spoke to Waldron, who is also a writer and a director of the series spin-off of Manning's creation, we asked the co-creator what drew him and Powell to the project.

He told us: "Well, Glen and I have been good buddies for a while and wanted to work together. We're both American football fans, college football fans.

"We saw the sketch and we saw an opportunity to tell a story in the world of college football, which hasn't really been done. Maybe [1993 film] Rudy did it right, but other than that, nobody's done it in a big, authentic way.

"Just the premise of a guy in this makeup trying to play football seemed so insane, and we were like: 'Let's just steer into the insanity of that and see where it takes us,' and we had a blast.

When we asked Waldron if it was fun to work on a more character-based, intimate and overtly comic project after years as a writer for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), he replied: "Well, it was nice that I didn't have to worry about time travel or multiversal shenanigans happening.

"There were a few less rules that I had to keep in my head."

However, Waldron also added:

"I love my time in the MCU and I think that there's probably more crossover between the two than it seems.

"These athletes are real life superheroes in a lot of ways.

"And when I think about the stuff in the MCU that I was most interested in exploring, like in Loki, [it was] how these heroes and villains are faced with very human problems and how they deal with them.

"I tried to find sort of the same foundational story there with Chad Powers."

It's worth noting that Chad Powers is very funny, particularly the folksy, put-on southern drawl Russ adopts when he is in his Chad persona, as well as the increasingly convoluted made-up lore Russ keeps giving his alter ego.

When Russ, as Chad of course, tells the Catfish's coach (played by the great Steve Zahn, The White Lotus) that he was home-schooled in West Virginia, the coach asks: "You ever play in front of a crowd?"

To this, Chad responds: "Well, that depended... on the wolves... There were a lot of wild wolves in our area, and sometimes they'd carry off the babes.

"So, in feeding season, folks might not show up for the games for fear of having their babes carried off."

Glen Powell as Chad Powers

Waldron told JOE: "That was definitely our favourite stuff to write."

"In some ways, it's the best stuff as a writer because the whole point of Chad is that he's bad at improvising, and so the best way to write those scenes is to sit down and just write the dumbest thing that comes into your head and just chase that down.

"And by the way, as much as that stuff was written, just as much of it was Glen improvising. Glen is brilliant at improvising being a bad improviser.

"One of my favourite days on set was the first episode when Chad is in his tryout... [It was] just running back and forth onto the field, me and Glen working out a million different crazy things for him to say.

"That was the energy of the entire show. Let's make it crazy, and let's have a blast doing it."

Yet as Waldron noted above, there are "human problems" and drama in Chad Powers.

The more the show progresses, the more it becomes about identity and persona (similar to Powell's last scripted project, the Netflix crime comedy Hit Man), as well as redemption.

In a way, the series is the dark inverse of Ted Lasso. In Ted Lasso, many of the supporting characters did not trust the titular character at first, believing that his genuine, unwavering kindness and optimism was too unbelievable.

Chad Powers, on the other hand, follows a very flawed and selfish person who adopts a kind and optimistic persona for personal gain, before gradually realising he actually prefers his alter ego to himself.

As Russ, posing as Chad, grows closer to his Catfish teammates and managers, he starts to really care about them and wants to help them succeed. In order to do this, however, he needs to continue to conceal his real-life identity and lie to them.

It's these darker, knottier ideas at the heart of Chad Powers that make the show's six-part first season a compelling watch, on top of being a funny one.

How to watch Chad Powers

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The first two episodes of Chad Powers are streaming on Disney+ now, with the rest of its six-episode season dropping weekly on Tuesdays.