What to stream this week: Size matters in Elizabeth Banks’ new comedy, plus five more picks

This week’s picks include the wonderfully silly The Miniature Wife, the return of a Norwegian noir hero, Aaron Chen’s stand-up special and the Brit take on Saturday Night Live.

The Miniature Wife ★★★★ (Stan)

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.

Jo Nesbo’s Detective Hole ★★★ (Netflix)

Jo Nesbo obviously believes in the adage that if you want something done right, do it yourself. The Norwegian crime novelist has sold 50 million books, the great majority being crime novels from his series about police detective Harry Hole. But the Hollywood adaptation of the character, played by Michael Fassbender in the 2017 thriller, The Snowman, was dismal. Nesbo’s response? He’s created this sturdy, well-seasoned Harry Hole series, penning every episode.

The show’s only real problem is that he wrote too many. Nesbo has been inclusive: multiple plots, side relationships and involved supporting characters all stretch this conflicted procedural out to nine instalments – six would have rewarded the crackerjack pacing, the score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and the suitably lived-in lead performance of Tobias Santelmann as Hole. The actor makes the hard-boiled cliches that power Harry plausible, from the reformed alcoholic’s guilt to unconventional but brilliant work techniques.

Starting with a horrific bank robbery Harry obsesses over, the MA-rated show is a gaudy noir that accelerates when a performative serial killer adds to an Oslo heatwave. There’s also a great foil for Harry in a colleague who’s very much his opposite. Tom Waaler (Joel Kinnaman) is a charming networker and possibly corrupt, with the pair’s professional collaboration serving as a kind of personal temptation for Harry. A concise second season would be welcome.

The Boys ★★★½ (Amazon Prime Video)

It’s not easy for a satire when your fictional exaggerations start to look minor compared to reality, but that’s the situation this send-up of superhero worship and American corporate menace faces. Eric Kripke’s hit show didn’t get outflanked so much as out-Trumped. The show’s fifth and final season has a familiar structure, even as the super-powered fascist villain Homelander (Antony Starr) now runs America, with his cynical adversary Butcher (Karl Urban) reuniting his misfit team and pursuing the means of killing the unkillable. But it stays strong – there’s even more gore and screw-loose social media commentary.

Aaron Chen: Funny Garden ★★★ (Netflix)

This stand-up special from Australian comic and Fisk co-star Aaron Chen was filmed in New York, playing as observations and riffs on America by a visitor filled with deadpan admiration and some curious queries. Chen’s dry delivery is punctuated by a sweet laugh and his best lines have a way of sounding silly but making sense when you give them a second to sink ... as national monuments go, you absolutely can compare the Statue of Liberty to the Big Banana. There’s no conceptual twist, no grand reveal, just a stream of droll one-liners.

Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice ★★½ (Disney+)

Part action-movie bloodbath and part time-travel comedy, BenDavid Grabinski’s cult movie nominee is keen to mash genres together and offer warped twists on B-movie conventions. It doesn’t always work, but there’s such a madcap brio to the retro-Tarantino machinations that you can at least go with it. A mob boss’s celebration forms the quirky backdrop, as Future Nick (Vince Vaughn) enlists Mike (James Marsden), who is having an affair with Alice (Eiza Gonzalez), the wife of Present Nick (Vaughn again), to kidnap his younger self. Just go with it.

Saturday Night Live: UK ★★½ (HBO Max)

The British edition of Saturday Night Live, the American sketch comedy institution that’s been airing since 1975, has been running for a month now. It’s a mixed bag, which is fair enough since that’s been the status of the original for many years now. As a baton pass, Tina Fey, a former SNL head writer, hosted the first episode, and the British edition is quite slavish in duplicating the American format, right down to the musical guest and Weekend Update segment. It needs to loosen up, which the subsequent Jamie Dornan episode thankfully did.

Want more TV? We’ve got you.

• Newsletter: Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
• Aaron Chen: He’s left Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee and won’t be drawn on Fisk, so what’s next for our favourite webmaster?
• Sally Wainwright: The former bus driver (yes, really) has written some of the best characters on TV. These are some of her best.
• MasterChef Australia: Judge Sofia Levin reveals the private pain that is driving her.
• Streaming guides: What to watch this month.

*Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.