• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, April 6, 2026

The story of a woman who becomes a miniature wife when she undergoes significant shrinkage was told 45 years before this week’s premiere of “The Miniature Wife” on Peacock.

The new show, which stars Elizabeth Banks as the little woman, starts streaming this Thursday on Peacock.

But long before there was “The Miniature Wife,” there was “The Incredible Shrinking Woman.” 

Released in January 1981, the movie starred Lily Tomlin, Charles Grodin, Ned Beatty, Henry Gibson, Sally Kirkland and Dick Wilson (best-known as “Mr. Whipple” in long-ago commercials for Charmin’).

In “The Miniature Wife,” Banks plays a best-selling author who is reduced to six inches tall in a technological mishap. In the above photo, she is not much taller than a Post-it note. 

The accident is caused by a miniaturization device created by her husband (Matthew Macfadyen). This “induces the ultimate relationship crisis,” says some publicity material from Peacock. 

In “The Incredible Shrinking Woman,” Tomlin plays Pat, a suburban housewife and mother, whose shrinkage is also related to her husband’s profession, only here he is an advertising executive (Grodin).

Somehow, she becomes exposed to some experimental perfume and other chemicals related to his job and she then begins to gradually get smaller and smaller until she is barely microscopic.

Whether or not her predicament was ever categorized by anyone as a satirical description of domestic dynamics is something I could not determine from an internet search. 

“The Incredible Shrinking Woman” is clearly a comedy. “The Miniature Wife” is billed as a dramedy.

If “The Incredible Shrinking Woman” satirized anything, it was the advertising business. It also happened to be a parody of “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” a 1957 movie drama based on a novel by Richard Matheson. 

Other “shrinking” movies include “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids” and “Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves.” 

On TV, little earthlings got in heaps of trouble on a planet populated by big people on “Land of the Giants.”

“The Miniature Wife” was first announced at the NBCUniversal Upfront last May in New York.

The TV Blog has eagerly awaited its arrival ever since because dramedies about shrunken people are as rare on TV as sitcoms about talking orangutans, of which only one is known -- “Mr. Smith” (1983, NBC).

So far, “Mr. Smith” is the best talking-ape TV series that has ever been made for television. 

Will “The Miniature Wife” emerge as the best shrunken-wife dramedy ever made? Come back here on Wednesday and find out.