Shrinking review: Harrison Ford and Jason Segel will probably make you laugh but definitely warm your heart

Jason Segel and Harrison Ford in Shrinking.

Greg and Zanna review a show that does not reflect counselling best practice.

SCORES

Innovation: 1.5

Gags: 3.5

Casting: 5

SHE SAW

I’ve liked Jason Segel in everything I’ve seen him in, including Shrinking, which is quite unsettling given he behaves objectively badly. The series is about a widowed therapist who, consumed by grief, fails to support his teenage daughter and hands off parenting to his nosy neighbour. A year since his wife’s death, Jimmy (Segel) finds himself feeling frustrated by the lack of progress in his patients - mirroring his own lack of progress - and makes an about-turn in the way he treats them, intervening in their lives in ways that go well beyond the bounds of ethical and professional treatment.

The heart of this show is the office that Segel shares with fellow therapists Paul (Harrison Ford) and Gabby (Jessica Williams). The banter, warmth and familial-like relationship between the three therapists is exactly what you’d expect from a show that shares some creative DNA with Ted Lasso. But Shrinking is funnier.

It’s a great role for Ford, who’s perfectly suited to this grumpy old man with a heart of gold archetype. His character is dealing with a recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, a strained relationship with his adult daughter, a secret friendship with Jimmy’s grieving teenage daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell), and growing concern over Jimmy’s unorthodox treatment style. Williams is also very funny as the deadpan witty female in the office in the middle of divorcing her addict husband.

Therapists probably won’t like this show or at least they’ll have to suspend a lot of disbelief to enjoy it because every bad professional decision Jimmy makes - like inviting a patient to move in with him or demanding a patient leave her husband - would in reality likely get him deregistered. But if you give this show more than a couple of episodes, it’s quite hard not to fall for it.

Shrinking is part of a recent comedy cannon that could loosely be called the humans-are-inherently-good genre, which appears to be a response to the humans-are-inherently-bad sentiment omnipresent online and beyond over the past few, increasingly polarising, years. It’s heartwarming television that centres either an endlessly optimistic nice person who teaches everyone to get along, as in Lasso, or a deeply pessimistic/flawed person whose community teaches them to be good, as in The Good Place or Schitt’s Creek. Shrinking is a hybrid - Jimmy is a loveable nice guy derailed from his essential goodness by grief and who, with the love and support of his friends, finds his way back to himself.

Yes, it’s saccharine and earnest but if pandemics and earthquakes and floods and hurricanes and spy balloons and military invasions intend to carry on at their current pace, I’ll choose feel-good entertainment every time.

HE SAW

I was into it from the opening scene, when Jason Segel’s neigbours are woken in the middle of the night by him drunk or high or both, sitting by his pool talking with a couple of sex workers.

Segel has been perfectly cast in everything he’s ever starred in, mainly because he’s impossible to cast badly. After Paul Rudd, he’s the most likeable man in Hollywood: warm, loveable, able to convey deep sadness, effortlessly funny and did I mention loveable? His is a unique mix of skills and abilities that are ripe for exploitation in these times of great uncertainty.

Casting is this show’s masterstroke. Not just because of the skills of the individual actors but because of the interplay between their contrasting and complementary skills. The grumpy pathos of Harrison Ford playing off against the bright sass and comic timing of Jessica Williams and Segel’s hopeful sadness, and on and on.

This is a show that’s designed for broad appeal. It doesn’t push boundaries. At its heart it’s a sitcom. It feels like the inevitable end product of a pop culture world that is entering a phase of recessionary caution. It’s part of the Ted Lassofication of the comedy world, where warmth and kindness are increasingly seen as vital elements. I was unable to enjoy Ted Lasso, not because of the kindness and warmth but because of the humour, which was bad. By contrast, in Shrinking the gags are mostly solid and even when they’re not, the cast deliver so beautifully as to redeem them. Someone singing along to a song that seems unlikely for her character is a hackneyed concept and is therefore objectively unfunny, but when Williams’s character does a singalong to the 2000 hit song Absolutely (Story of a Girl), she’s so good and the song so perfectly chosen it’s a genuine highlight.

This isn’t a show that demands watching, but it’s a show that rewards watching. You come to it when you’re ready, on your own terms. In my experience, those terms are about wanting to be comforted but not patronised. The show wraps its arms around you and says, “Yes, everything sucks sometimes, but at least we can laugh.” And if that doesn’t sound important to you, you probably need it more than you realise.

Shrinking is streaming now on Apple TV+.