Peacock’s new sci-fi series The Miniature Wife is an arch-feminist revision of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), with exactly that film’s gravitas and moral sophistication. But wait! Is it possible that this derivative goofball dramedy is actually fun?

Through its charmless first episode, the answer is a hard “no.” The series stars Matthew Macfadyen as Les Littlejohn, a mad scientist attempting to master “cellular reduction.” Les’s premise is that staple crops can be shrunk to the size of pinholes, sown on tiny plots, and reinflated to feed the world. Alas, before he can make his fortune, Les inadvertently shrinks his wife, Lindy, a Pulitzer-winning novelist played by Elizabeth Banks. Previously the brash author of My Rainbow Starts with Black (I’ll pass), Lindy is now, in her own telling formulation, the size of “a dry martini.”