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Add Shrinking to your watchlist
A day before Apple TV’s Shrinking returned to screens for its third season this week, a fourth run of the comedy-drama was announced – a real show of the faith the streamer has in the series.
While co-creator Bill Lawrence had long stated that the series was pitched with a three-season arc, it’s perhaps unsurprising that it’s now going beyond this. Not only has lawrence already proven his willingness to do so with Ted Lasso‘s upcoming continuation, but the series has been a monumental success.
It’s a show that’s both remarkably funny and knows how to tug at the heartstrings. It also surely has escaped the notice of few that it’s one of two comedies to have been released in recent years specifically centred around the grief of a protagonist following the death of his wife.
The first of these was After Life,Ricky Gervais’s Netflix hit. In another era, viewers might have balked at the idea that laughs could be found in such a tragic set-up – but not in the era of the ‘sadcom’.
A sub-genre seemingly birthed in the late 2000s and which dominated the 2010s, the sadcom takes the idea of comedy-drama to extremes. Rather than simply combining moments of pathos and drama with a healthy dose of humour, it specifically centres a story that deals with arduous subject matter, heartache and trauma, and punctuates it with jokes.
It’s notable that Jason Segel should front a show which is as much an example of the form as Shrinking. I would argue that the show which shot him into the fame stratosphere, How I Met Your Mother, was dabbling around in the sadcom waters early.
