Apple TV+
You can feel the urge to laugh shriveling up and dying with each passing minute of Shrinking, a new half-hour Apple TV+ series from Jason Segel, Bill Lawrence, and Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein.
Premiering Jan. 27, the series is about a grieving therapist who shakes up his life, and practice, by letting patients know precisely how he feels, and then getting intensely involved in their issues. Boasting grating turns from its overdoing-it cast, scripts that are like nails on a chalkboard, and the participation of Harrison Ford in a role, and project, that’s beneath him, it’s the nadir of “high concept” comedy.
When we first meet Jimmy (Segel), he’s partying it up in his pool at 3 am with drugs, booze, and a couple of prostitutes. This wakes up his neighbor Liz (Christa Miller), who’s not only Jimmy’s nosy friend but also a surrogate mom for his teenage daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell), who’s become estranged from her dad in the wake of her biological mother’s recent car-accident death.