Ivan Radford | On 13, Oct 2024

Season 2 premieres on 16th October 2024. This review was originally published in January 2024 and is based on Season 1.

Where do therapists go when they need therapy? That’s the starting point for Apple TV+ series Shrinking. It’s a 10-part exploration of grief, pain and denial. It’s also a comedy. And it’s one of the best shows of 2023 that you probably missed entirely.

Jason Segel stars as Jimmy, who is still coming to terms with the death of his wife a year ago. We first meet him as he’s hosting a raucous drunken pool party – so it’s no surprise that he’s not exactly on good terms with his daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell). What is surprising, perhaps, is that he’s a therapist.

Jimmy works at a practice with Gaby (the effervescent Jessica Williams) and Paul (the gloriously grouchy Harrison Ford), who is his mentor and effectively their boss. Neither Paul or Jimmy are particularly cheerful about spending their days listening to other people’s problems, but Paul cares about doing it properly. Jimmy, increasingly off the rails, one day runs out of patience and starts telling people the solution to their situations rather than help them to get their on their own. He calls it being a “psychological vigilante”, with a manic grin that wouldn’t reassure anybody.

“Just leave him!” he shouts at Grace (Heidi Gardner), who is in a harmful marriage. “Take up boxing!” he cries to Sean (Luke Tennis), an Afghanistan veteran who needs court-mandated anger management sessions and is struggling with PTSD. Soon enough, Grace is convinced she’s in love with Jimmy and Sean is crashing in Jimmy’s poolhouse. Professional, it ain’t. But does it work? That’s not very clear either – but what does happen, through his friendship with Sean, is that Jimmy starts to find some sense of purpose again. He reunites with old friend Brian (Michael Urie) and tries to be there for his daughter.

Of course, all these breakthroughs involve Jimmy connecting with other people, and that’s where Shrinking finds its real heart. The fact that it’s created by Ted Lasso duo Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein is only natural: like that footballing series, it celebrates the value of relationships with other people.

The writing therefore is at its best when people are talking, and the dialogue is a wonderfully painful and frequently funny mix of honest confessions, inappropriate admissions and unexpected exchanges. None of this would work without a spot-on cast, and the ensemeble have a beautiful chemistry that instantly convinces.

Christa Miller is fantastic as Jimmy’s neighbour, Liz, who is begins as a disapproving surrogate mother to Alice but finds more nuance to her – as a concerned onlooker and a vulerable empty nester – the more she interacts with the rest of the actors. Lukita Maxwell is hugely moving as a daughter still moving through the stages of grief, partly because she doesn’t have a dad who’s present, and she’s excellent at capturing the way this innocent teenager has had to grow up beyond her years and work out how and when to let her less mature adult father back into her life. (She also has some very sweet scenes in which she meets Paul on a park bench for informal therapy sessions.)

Jessica Williams is as delight as always as Gaby, who is not just a workmate but the best friend of Jimmy’s late wife. She’s going through a divorce, but has the humour and heart to both support other people and share and work through her own problems – she swiftly emerges as the most rounded and together character on screen, while still being flawed and relatable, and it’s a joy to see her gradually become the MVP of her practice. She and Jason Segel have a winning and honest bond, but it’s her interactions with Paul that most frequently raise a smile, as she gives him a lift to work in the mornings, soundtracked by Sugar Ray.

Jason Segel, meanwhile, pulls off the impossible and makes the troublesome Jimmy a likeable figure. His open-faced charm makes him ideal to play someone who’s hurting in such a raw way, without losing his innate comic timing. While Jimmy is a self-centred, problematic fellow, Segel nails the gradual recalibration of Jimmy’s life and worldview.

The episodes’ brisk 30-minute runtimes make sure his sadness never slows down the series, while directors such as James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now) and Ry Russo-Young (Before I Fall) have a deft handle on tone and pacing, drawing laughs and tears out of every scene.

Harrison Ford, however, is the reason to tune in. In only his second TV role, he steals the whole show from everyone else, often just by silently shrugging. His downbeat gravitas and twinkly-eyed gruffness are disarming to spend such elongated time with. He’s hilarious as he refuses to skimp on the sarcastic one-liners and keep the show’s sentimental streak in check. But he also has a wonderful melancholy to his performance that repeatedly catches you off guard – not least when Paul winds up stoned on edibles.

The result is an unlikely workplace comedy, a thoughful ensemble drama and a strangely uplifting story about learning to move on. Above all, it’s a reminder of the importance of communicating how you feel – and, sure enough, once you reach Season 1’s note-perfect finale, you’ll be itching to tell everyone else about it. Shrinking is a show that grows on you.

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