The first season of Shrinking, an American comedy from the makers of Apple TV+ stablemate Ted Lasso, was all about grief and recovery. Jimmy (Jason Segel) was a likeable psychotherapist whose wife had been killed in a car crash. As the series picked up, Jimmy spiralled, along the way deciding that he was just going to tell his needy patients at the practice where he worked what he really thought they should do, as opposed to what clinical dogma dictated. Inevitably, the sod-it mentality yielded instant results… until one of his clients crowned the series finale by pushing her abusive partner off a cliff.
Series two begins with Jimmy visiting that patient in prison, wondering if perhaps his new type of tough-love therapy – christened “Jimmying” by another one of his clients – is really the way to go. Mostly this indecision is played out in conversation with Jimmy’s boss Paul (Harrison Ford), a committed grouch but a superb reader of people.
Both seasons of Shrinking try to pull off the same trick as Ted Lasso, Apple’s first and, so far, biggest hit. Both are half-hour comedies fuelled by an innate optimism, but they stave off the sentimentality with shock comedy. So just as you’re getting a little fed up with all the growing and journeys, someone will drop an F-bomb or start declaiming about their rampant pubic hair.
The effect is like dropping a filthy breakbeat in a Coldplay song but, like any neat trick, its efficacy wanes through overuse. I loved Ted Lasso initially but by the end its mawkishness was suffocating. Shrinking’s second season is not exactly pushing the dial either.
It’s less reliant on the big two of Segel and Ford, bringing in Lasso’s Brett Goldstein (also a writer on this show) in a surprising role as Segel’s new antagonist. It works up to a point but to this gnarled old churl there’s still too much growing and learning going on, and all among wealthy people with Elle Deco lives. Ultimately, it’s just too easy not to care: Shrinking’s appeal, a season in, is indeed shrinking.
Shrinking season two begins on Apple TV+ on Wednesday 16 October
