Today’s TV Roundup: Ted Lasso Star Lands Animated Series, Instagram Takes On Netflix, and Anime’s Big American Moment

If you blinked this morning, you missed a lot. The TV world doesn’t sleep — and Tuesday brought a surprisingly packed slate of announcements, from a beloved Ted Lasso star’s next act to Instagram making a move that should make Netflix at least a little nervous.

Here’s your afternoon rundown of the stories actually worth your attention.

Nick Mohammed Is Bringing Magic to Animation

Nick Mohammed — the guy who played the wonderfully awkward Nathan Shelley on Ted Lasso — has landed his next project, and it’s about as far from AFC Richmond as you can get.

Mohammed is adapting his own kids’ book series, The Young Magicians, into an animated series with BBC Studios and Blink Industries. Deadline broke the news this morning, and the details paint a picture of a project that’s been brewing for a while. Mohammed isn’t just lending his name to it — he’s actively involved in the development, which makes sense when you consider the guy has been performing magic since he was a kid. This isn’t a random celebrity book deal. It’s personal.

The books follow a group of young magicians navigating a world where magic is real but hidden — classic setup, but Mohammed’s comedic sensibilities (the ones that made Nate’s arc on Ted Lasso so painfully real) should give this a flavor that stands apart from the endless sea of animated content flooding platforms right now.

BBC Studios and Blink Industries are no small players either. Blink was behind the Emmy-winning Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, and BBC Studios Kids & Family has been on a tear with adaptations lately. The project’s still in early development — no network or streaming home announced yet — but given the Ted Lasso heat and Mohammed’s built-in audience, expect a bidding situation.

Instagram Is Quietly Building a Streaming Service

Here’s the one that caught me off guard: Instagram is making a serious play for your living room.

TechCrunch reported that Meta is expanding Instagram’s TV app — already available on Amazon Fire TV and Google TV, now rolling out to Samsung TVs — with longer-form episodic content and live creator experiences. They’re testing a “Series” feature for multi-episode content, adding curated channels, and building out a horizontal video section designed specifically for TV screens.

Let that sink in. Instagram isn’t just coming for TikTok’s lunch money anymore. They’re now staring down Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and every other streamer fighting for your evening attention.

The strategy is smart in a way that’s hard to dismiss: Instagram already has billions of users, an army of creators hungry for new formats, and a recommendation algorithm that knows what you’ll watch before you do. The question isn’t whether they can build it — it’s whether creators will make content good enough to compete with the prestige dramas and big-budget productions viewers are used to.

Meta tested episodic Reels on Instagram and Facebook earlier this month. The early signals are positive enough that they’re now building the living room infrastructure. If you’ve been watching the slow, expensive collapse of the streaming wars — endless price hikes, password-sharing crackdowns, shows canceled after one season — Instagram’s pitch starts to sound pretty compelling: free, creator-driven, and already on the device in your pocket.

It’s early days. But this is the kind of move that looks obvious in hindsight.

Anime’s American Moment at Annecy

Over at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, something significant is happening: American buyers have stopped treating anime like a weird cousin they’re not sure what to do with.

Webtoon Productions’ global animation chief Sydney Bright told Deadline that the shift is real. American networks and streamers are now actively commissioning anime and anime-inspired content — not just licensing finished Japanese productions, but investing in the development pipeline from the ground up.

This tracks with what we’ve been seeing. Rick and Morty: The Anime was a legitimate hit for Adult Swim. Netflix keeps pouring money into anime originals. Crunchyroll’s subscriber numbers keep climbing. The audience has been there for years — the industry just finally caught up.

Bright specifically pointed to projects like Lore Olympus and Perfect Addiction as examples of the kind of anime-inspired storytelling American studios are now willing to fund. The key difference from five years ago: they’re not asking for it to be “less anime.” They’re finally letting the format be what it is.

The Quick Hits

Mindy Kaling’s Not Suitable For Work wraps its first season on Hulu tomorrow with a two-episode finale. The ensemble comedy has been getting Friends comparisons (Kaling herself addressed the elephant in the room with Deadline — she’ll take it, but the show is very much its own thing). Hulu ordered the season in an unusual batch structure, and the finale brings in Giggly Squad stars Paige DeSorbo and Hannah Berner for what sounds like a chaotic guest appearance.

Meanwhile, The Circle reboot is moving forward at Hulu without original host Michelle Buteau, who confirmed she won’t be returning after seven seasons. “I hope you have fun putting a square in a circle,” she said on Watch What Happens Live, which is the kind of exit line you can’t script. The circle metaphor works on multiple levels and she clearly knows it.

And one more worth flagging: Ryan O’Connell confirmed the Anon Pls adaptation — based on the DeuxMoi-inspired novel — is officially dead at HBO Max. “It didn’t move forward,” he said. Another one bites the development dust.

The Bigger Picture

Looking at all of this together, you can see the shape of where TV is heading. Streaming platforms are diversifying into animation and anime because it’s cheaper to produce and travels globally without the cultural friction of live-action. Social platforms are blurring the line between creator content and traditional television. And the talent — actors like Nick Mohammed, creators like Mindy Kaling — are spreading their bets across multiple formats instead of hitching their wagon to a single show.

That last point matters more than people realize. The era of the 10-season network sitcom is over. What’s replacing it is a landscape where everyone — actors, writers, platforms — has to be more flexible. The winners will be the ones who can tell a good story in any format the audience wants to watch it in.

Not a bad Tuesday for TV news. See you tomorrow.