Apple TV's Shrinking might be the last sadcom – here's why TV comedy is going through major changes

A day before Apple TV's Shrinking returned to screens for its third season this week, a fourth run of the comedy-drama was announced – a real show of the faith the streamer has in the series.

While co-creator Bill Lawrence had long stated that the series was pitched with a three-season arc, it's perhaps unsurprising that it's now going beyond this. Not only has Lawrence already proven his willingness to do so with Ted Lasso's upcoming continuation, but the series has been a monumental success.

It's a show that's both remarkably funny and knows how to tug at the heartstrings. It also surely has escaped the notice of few that it's one of two comedies to have been released in recent years specifically centred around the grief of a protagonist following the death of his wife.

The first of these was After Life, Ricky Gervais's Netflix hit. In another era, viewers might have balked at the idea that laughs could be found in such a tragic set-up - but not in the era of the 'sadcom'.

A sub-genre seemingly birthed in the late 2000s and which dominated the 2010s, the sadcom takes the idea of comedy-drama to extremes. Rather than simply combining moments of pathos and drama with a healthy dose of humour, it specifically centres a story that deals with difficult subject matter, heartache and trauma, and punctuates it with jokes.

It's notable that Jason Segel should front a show which as much an example of the form as Shrinking. I would argue that the show which shot him into the fame stratosphere, How I Met Your Mother, was dabbling around in the sadcom waters early.

It was never a full-blown sadcom per-se, but with episodes such as Last Words, Symphony of Illumination and The Time Travellers tackling grief, infertility and loneliness, it certainly leaned into the emotion more than most sitcoms that preceded it, and knew how to bring out the waterworks among viewers. And who can forget that divisive final episode, in which the mother the entire series had nominally been about had died prior to the protagonist, Ted, telling his long, protracted story.

Since then, sadcoms have been everywhere - series such as The End of the F***ing World, Fleabag, Flowers, This is Going to Hurt, Rain Dogs, Barry, Catastrophe, Undone, Bad Sisters, The Bear, I May Destroy You, Back to Life and my personal favourite, BoJack Horseman, have all tackled difficult, often distressing topics, and hit viewers hard when they're least expecting it, right after a big laugh.

In fact, back in 2023, I was close to writing an article on the dominance of the sadcom, how it had displaced the traditional sitcom in a way which felt fairly irreversible. However, even then it felt like something about that diagnosis wasn't quite right, and like a change was just starting to brew.

Now, in 2026, I feel confidant to say that that change is here – a trend back towards sitcom and straight comedy seems to be taking place. Shows like The Studio, The Paper and Abbott Elementary are dominating in the US, while British sitcoms like Amandaland and Mandy are riding high. Sadcoms are still around, for sure, but they no longer feel like they're in the ascendancy, while laugh-out-loud comedies are all the rage.

All of this means that Shrinking may be one of the last true examples of the sadcom, at least in its dominant era. But why?

First, we probably have to look at why sadcoms became so popular and so prevalent in the first place. From a commissioning standpoint, Jon Petrie, Director of BBC Comedy Commissioning, who has now told producers to 'focus on the funny' when pitching, puts it down to the advent of another massive change in the entertainment industry - the arrival of the streaming age.

"There was a period where the streamers were in town, and there was lots of talk of co-production," Petrie says, speaking exclusively with Radio Times. "There were lots of co-productions happening. And it was like, 'How can we make our shows feel glossier?' After Fleabag especially, there was a real interest in what was going on in British TV and comedy."

So was it a specifically American influence that brought the sadcom to audiences all across the globe, including in the UK?

"I think that's definitely got a lot to do with it," Petrie says. "I think also, people always say, 'Write about what you know and talk about those experiences'. And it became this kind of, 'This person on a personal journey and following their experiences with cancer or experiences with adoption' or whatever the story might be, and focus solely on that, rather than a family of characters.

"It sort of needed to have a bit more meat to it. And I suppose that's probably the influence of going back all the way to shows like Sopranos and Breaking Bad.

"There’s an appetite for comedy drama as globally it’s seen as a safer bet. Sitcom and laugh-out-loud comedy is riskier - it's easier to give a sitcom one star.

"You never see a comedy-drama get less that three stars, if you don’t like it you just shrug and switch over. When something announces itself as a sitcom you immediately judge it alongside stuff that has taken a few seasons to establish itself. If you watch a bad comedy you want to throw a brick at the screen!"

Comedy-drama is one thing, but sadcoms are often directly attempting to move the audience - to make them think, to make them cry, to switch dramatically from one tone and tempo to another. So why did audiences embrace them so wholeheartedly for a time?

For a psychological perspective, I turned to Dr Luke Hodson, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick.

"People like to watch sad films," Hodson notes. The research on this goes back decades, actually. There was some work that was done right in the early '90s which they called the 'sad film paradox' of, why do people like to watch things that essentially make them emotional?

"Not so long ago, that was investigated again, and the research seems to indicate it's because people like to be moved. So it's not so much the feeling of the emotion. I think that people are certainly attracted to that feeling of, 'I want to feel like I've been moved', and whatever meaning that gives them. So I think when things started to trend towards this mixed media, it's maybe people were craving that."

Hodson notes that, particularly in the case of a TV comedy, which often have shorter runtimes than dramas, it's "a nice, controlled way of feeling those things".

"If it's in a 30 minute programme where I get to see these things or feel them, it's like a nice parcelled-out way of processing or thinking about those things, and it perhaps stops having to have those bigger questions about how this might be impacting you, he says. "It's quite attractive to have this small block of time that's dedicated to processing these things."

So, why might that be changing now?

"I think that from a broad level, it seems to reflect the state of the world," Hodson suggests. "So, when things are kind of okay, people are trying to get that sense of movement, and then when the world goes a little bit the opposite way, they don't need that from there anymore - or they're getting that sense of a wider connection to the world from other sources, so they're craving something a bit simpler."

This is something Petrie recognises too. While he notes that a big driver of the move away from sadcoms, at least from the BBC's perspective, is that "those days of co-producing feel like they're coming to an end", and that the industry is therefore "returning back to our roots," the mood of the nation, and of the world generally, could be a factor.

"Most comedies take two or three years to actually come to fruition from the start of development. I think it's probably fair to say, generally, since the financial crash, and then subsequently, like with Brexit and then Covid, the mood of the national has gradually just got worse, and people generally are feeling less positive with their outlook on life.

"I think it's very important for us to carve out a space for laugh out loud, stupid comedy."

Of course, even with the built-in delay for development, it doesn't seem that the mood of the nation can account for this move away from sadcoms entirely. Some of the most popular examples of the form, such as Shrinking, were thought up during Covid, one of the most traumatic and disruptive moments in most of our lifetimes. They have also arrived post-then, when the global instability and general social malaise that Hodson and Petrie both mention seems to have particularly taken hold.

Petrie suggests that, from an audience perspective, it could just be the case that viewers are becoming skeptical of a phenomenon which has long been the bugbear of those operating in the comedy sector.

"Ultimately, I do think audiences get wise to things like The Bear getting nominated and winning the Best Comedy," he says. "I think audiences have started to go, 'Hang on a second. All these things are being called comedies, but they're not funny.'

"It always annoys me, personally, as a comedy person. I think comedy is one of the hardest things to do, and people just put comedy on the end of their drama, and then everyone just calls their comedy and tells them they're amazing. I think it sort of degrades how hard it is to make an amazing comedy."

Trends in comedy, and in entertainment in general, tend to move with generations. Could there be a generational element towards viewers turning away from the sadcom, particularly the ever-evasive Gen Alpha?

Gen Alpha is generally considered to consist of those born in the early to mid 2010s, meaning that all of the global disruption already referenced, and in particular the Covid pandemic, aligned with their most formative years. Could it be that many of them have experienced enough emotional upheaval already, and aren't looking for it in their media?

"There's three main reasons, essentially, why humour is part of how humans interact," Hodson says, reflecting on the research surrounding the topic. "The first one is relief – essentially, that we use it to relieve some form of tension, like a steam valve going off. I think from the perspective of, millennial or like Gen Z, maybe humour still has a place there as a relief thing. So kind of intertwining that sadness and happiness or humour and sadness together is to relieve something.

"If you're Gen alpha, if you’ve grown up in a world that is very different and very chaotic, and we don't have these periods of calm that we used to have. Maybe they don't need to have that relief anymore, maybe they're seeking it elsewhere?

"Another way that we use humour is to process incongruity. We all have an understanding of the way the world should work, and we use humour to make sense of it. There's that old adage of people laughing at a funeral because they don't know how to make sense of it - something has changed, so they use humour to try and make sense of how what they expect from the world is different from what they're getting.

"Again, from a Gen Alpha perspective, it seems logical to me that their world isn't as stable. Things have changed so often, so repeatedly, that they don't have that incongruity anymore. They don't need to make sense of it."

Of course, Gen Alpha is also made up of true digital natives – they have never experiences a world without social media, and without smart phones and tablets. As TikTok and YouTube vie for individual's attention more and more, that has changed how both they, and indeed we of older generations, have consumed 'content'.

"I'm not a developmental psychologist," Hodson notes. "but I keep hearing it in the news, about the TikTok generation, where you're constantly getting this hit of dopamine. And I think that makes sense, at least logically to me, that if you're used to only watching things for 20 seconds, if your attention span’s different, a 30 minute comedy where you need 25 minutes for the laugh to pay off, that's a really different experience, isn't it? So maybe they're not trained for it."

It's something Petrie also points to, referring to the 'second screen' phenomenon. It's no secret that broadcasters and streamers are adapting to reflect this behaviour change, which has seen audiences watch a programme while also looking at their phone, laptop or tablet, doing something else.

In 2023, writer, director and producer Justine Bateman told The Hollywood Reporter: "I’ve heard from showrunners who are given notes from the streamers that 'This isn’t second screen enough.' Meaning, the viewer’s primary screen is their phone and the laptop and they don’t want anything on your show to distract them from their primary screen because if they get distracted, they might look up, be confused, and go turn it off."

Now, Petrie says: "More and more now that we're second screening and we're on devices, and your attention is in demand everywhere you look, I think it's probably harder to keep people's attention with those slower paced comedy-dramas that are sort of dealing with one particular issue.

"If you're not really fully focused – sadly, this is the world we live in - if you've got something that's got a high joke rate, then as long as there's a joke coming along every few seconds, you're more likely to probably to stay attuned to it.

"I think there’s probably an element where they’re spending a lot more time on YouTube and TikTok, and they're used to swiping the minute they get bored and they want that dopamine hit.

"I think another reason it might be swinging back is that when we look at the clips and the shows that do really well for us online, it'll be stuff like Cunk or Amandaland or Motherland or Things You Should Have Done or Smoggie Queens - it's shows where there are just stupid, silly moments that can clip up really well.

"Cunk has been an absolutely huge success on TikTok. It hasn't necessarily translated to millions and millions of views on iPlayer, but people just enjoy it in a different way. It's still good for the BBC, and it's still good for BBC comedy and the brand, but I think with a sadcom, you're a bit more limited as to what you can do and where that can go."

So if these are all the push factors, explaining why viewers may be turning away from sadcoms, what are some of the pull factors drawing them back to more traditional comedies and sitcoms?

In actuality, Petrie notes that the appetite for comedy never really went away, it's just that viewers often need to feel familiar with the characters and the set-up before they really engage with them. This can be difficult to pre-empt when it comes time for renewals, if a show has not performed well in its first outing.

"The audience data now is so good and so advanced that you can really get into the weeds of it, and the stuff that people return to again and again are shows like Ghosts and This Country and Amandaland and Motherland, and those shows that you can just watch over and over," he says.

"You can watch the same episode again, you can watch your favourite episode, you can dip in and out, and it's just comfort viewing. Obviously, it's the same in the case of Netflix, with the American Office and with Friends and The Big Bang Theory. People return to those shows. We've said for years, that's sort of where we wanted to kind of steer back towards.”

Petrie notes that a series like Here We Go, which is approaching its fourth season, needed time to bed in, and is becoming more widely recognised over time. It has always been well-reviewed, but "isn't a must-see show right now at this moment, water cooler type thing".

"It's just harder to get those shows press," he says. "And I totally understand why, because from a journalist’s point of view, it's so much easier to write about a story that's led by a particular issue or that sort of feels very pressy. When you're just making a family sitcom, it's hard to know what's the way in, other than talent and someone famous in it.

"And that's where we really had to trust that Tom Basden’s a brilliant writer, it has an amazing cast, and that when people find it, and the data backs us up, they keep watching it. When we look at all our audience measurements, we can see what the awareness is within the country and with Here We Go, it just had a very low awareness. So we knew there was plenty of room for it to grow."

He also says that from his and the BBC's perspective, they are definitely looking to commission sadcoms less than they were.

"That's not to say that we wouldn't ever do one of those sorts of shows, but that would have to sit firmly in the, 'this is to make you laugh more than to make you think' camp," he clarifies. When it comes to harder-hitting, heartbreaking moments, they can still be a beneficial feature, but "you need to earn those moments - they hit hardest when the characters have become loved by the audience and they feel like family".

What the BBC are looking for instead is "laugh-out-loud, story of the week, character driven, relatable sitcom", as Petrie believes that people are "craving that sort of comedy where it's people they recognise in worlds they recognise, and just something where you can just switch off and you're not being challenged in any way.

"Everything is so grim at the moment that I think our duty is to try and just give people a bit of relief."

Interestingly, comedy-drama doesn't seem to have actually gone away at all, but it has changed. As less sadcoms are being produced, more shows which I'm going to uninventively coin drama-comedys have emerged - series which have the format and structure of a drama (one-hour, ongoing storylines), but the lightness of a comedy and a slightly preposterous set-up. Think Ludwig and Death Valley.

It's a trend which Petrie is well-aware of, and something he is looking to lean in to more in the coming years.

"I think a lot of that is the thinking about the binge-ability," he says of this new trend. "I think basically you want two things. You either want someone to binge watch a whole series and be intrigued by the story and drawn through that, or you want a show with longevity and that quietly goes along, like Here We Go.

"We want to make a Ludwig type show or a Death Valley type show, because we believe that the DNA within that means that it can only really come from the comedy side. Because it's a ridiculous premise that if you investigate it too much, it starts to break up, but that's actually not the point of it - the point of it is to serve as a comic vehicle."

Where these trends go next, it's hard to say. Petrie believes the next frontier will see comedy commissioners looking more to TikTok and YouTube stars, although only where there is a natural transition to be made to TV.

"I think we have to remember what makes us special is that we make television and I think one of the reasons people want to work with us is because they want to make a comedy TV show.

"If we are going to move someone across into Telly, it's sort of making sure we do it in a way that feels like we're not just doing it because they're big on YouTube. It’s got to work as a TV show.

"I think keeping more of an eye on that, and not abandoning things like the Edinburgh TV festival, but I think it's certainly quite a meritocratic way of finding talent."

However, whether sadcom goes away entirely, comes back in force or is reinvented some way is difficult to know. But for now, it seems there are a multitude of reasons why it is somewhat in retreat, whether they be social and contemporaneous, generational, financial or simply an audience losing interest in shedding tears, unless through laughter.

Shrinking is set to continue, and long may it do so. But in 2026, the era of the sadcom appears to be coming to a close.

Shrinking season 3 will debut on Wednesday 28th January 2026. Seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on Apple TV+. You can sign up to Apple TV+ now.

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