You could say that in Peacock’s new series The Miniature Wife, Elizabeth Banks and Matthew MacFadyen find a way to minimize their marital difficulties.

You would be omitting a lot of important information, but you could say that. In the new series, coming next month on Peacock, Lindy Littlejohn (Banks) and her husband Les (MacFadyen) are experiencing strain in their marriage due to her career taking off and him being very jealous of her.

“My husband and I, we take turns supporting each other. So he supported me through my first book, and now it’s my turn,” Lindy tells a tableful of attendees at her Pulitzer award ceremony.
“My turn has yet to win me the Nobel,” Les passive-aggressively says.
“The Nobel?” cracks Lindy “Are you joking?”
“Not at all,” Les says, fake-laughing.

But Les has been successful at one thing: He’s invented a “bio-agritech that will change the world” with “the miracle of miniaturization.” We see it work on an ear of corn, and then inevitably, on his wife.

Lindy gets misted with the shrinking spray, passes out, and wakes up in an exact facsimile of her home, but in fact she’s in a dollhouse that is remarkably similar to her own domicile – except for the giant post-it note on the front door reading “don’t freak out!”

Of course, she does freak out when she sees Les’s face, looming as large as the moon, smiling at her from the open front door. Les explains to her that he definitely will restore her to her proper size, but when we see him in the lab trying to restore a shrunken ear of corn to its normal size, it explodes, which bodes very ill indeed for Lindy.

Les, though he finally has the upper hand in his marriage, has to deal with pressure from his corporate bosses, who insist he come up with a viable way to restore shrunken things to size or risk being kicked off the project, while Lindy learns to navigate a world of danger, fighting off boredom, insects, and the Roomba.

The Miniature Wife is based on the short story by Manuel Gonzales. The series also stars O-T Fagbenle, Zoe Lister-Jones, Sian Clifford and Sofia Rosinsky. Ronny Chieng, Aasif Mandvi, Rong Fu and Tricia Black recur.

Jennifer Ames and Steve Turner created the show and serve as showrunners and executive producers. Michael Aguilar and Suzanne Heathcote also executive produce alongside Banks and Macfadyen. Greg Mottola directs and executive produces. 

All 10 episodes of The Miniature Wife premiere April 9th on Peacock.