Size matters in Matthew Macfadyen and Elizabeth Banks’ wonderfully silly new comedy

The Miniature Wife ★★★★

Much happens in this marital comedy, which stars Matthew Macfadyen (Succession) and Elizabeth Banks (Mrs America) as a couple whose fraught dynamic gets a science-fiction resizing, but the most important thing to know is this: the show has a wonderful strain of silliness running through it. What does someone shrunk to 15 centimetres tall do? They go on a fantastic voyage through their home. Actioning big brain lab work? All the geeks have to wear spiffy red uniforms. For The Miniature Wife, farce is a fissile material.

Liberally expanded from the short story of the same name by Manuel Gonzales, this 10-part limited series has screwball logic and a pithy affection for flawed folks. When Lindy Littlejohn (Banks), a literary professor 18 years removed from her bestseller, declares “my husband made me small”, it’s not therapy talk. She’s accidentally unleashed the latest invention of her science superstar husband, Les (Macfadyen), a device that shrinks whatever is put in front of it. Small problem: Les hasn’t figured out how to safely reverse the process.

Some pertinent references include the Coen Brothers getting chirpy (Intolerable Cruelty), 1980s black comedies (War of the Roses), and any time Marvel’s Ant-Man got tiny and went rogue. It gives the relationship between Les and Lindy a firework dynamic, whatever her size. Both hope to save their marriage, trying to use a “green-light response” instead of a “red-light reaction”, but he’s prone to being consumed by his quest to get a Nobel Prize, and she has anger issues that do not get any smaller.

With Greg Mottola (Confess, Fletch) as the lead director, MacFadyen and Banks show off a deep affinity for adult comedy – the ground keeps shifting beneath their bond, and that’s before Les locks Lindy in a dollhouse for, he claims, her safety. The supporting cast is full of nutty scene-stealers, including Ronny Chieng as the billionaire bro buying Les out, O-T Fagbenle as Les’s deputy, who only has eyes for Lindy, and Zoe Lister-Jones as a disciplinarian who goes full Garbo.

Because it’s not committed to any one genre, The Miniature Wife may confuse some viewers, but I was delighted with the inventiveness the plot unleashed and was intrigued by the side-missions, whether it was Lindy in a life-and-death battle with a fly (loved the Thor action hero framing) or the feuding, mismatched leads having to work together for the good of their embittered daughter, university student Lulu (Sofia Rosinsky). Like the Lego that Lindy utilises, every piece here snaps together.

The Miniature Wife streams on Stan (which is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead) from April 9.

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