The Shrink Next Door Brings Familiar Faces to Apple TV+

Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd re-team for a new true-crime drama

Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd generated big laughs in the 2004 comedy Anchorman and its 2013 sequel, and they’re back together as stars of The Shrink Next Door, a new series for Apple TV+.

Anyone looking for a laugh riot, however, will want to rejig expectations for what’s actually a true-crime drama based on real events, previously covered in a hit podcast.

Ferrell plays Marty Markowitz, a shy and socially inept New Yorker who runs a drapery factory founded by his late parents. Suffering from increasingly severe panic attacks, Marty takes the advice of sister Phyllis (Kathryn Hahn) to seek help from psychiatrist Dr. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf (Rudd).

Dr. Ike’s unorthodox methods may push the professional norms, yet they seem to do the trick, resulting in a happier, more functional Marty—at least at first.

However, Phyllis soon becomes suspicious of Dr. Ike’s odd relationship with Marty. “He has no boundaries and I don’t trust him,” she tells her brother of the charming, manipulative psychiatrist.

When Marty tells Dr. Ike, he begins an aggressive smear campaign, resulting in Marty cutting Phyllis out of his life entirely while estranging him from his employees and everyone else in his life, becoming not just Marty’s best friend, but his only friend.

As the years pass, Dr. Ike gradually insinuates himself into all aspects of Marty’s life, taking over his company and the charitable foundation he encouraged Marty to fund, even moving himself, his wife (Casey Wilson) and their kids into Marty’s summer home in the Hamptons, throwing lavish, star-studded parties—all paid for by Marty.

“The series explores how a seemingly normal doctor-patient dynamic morphs into an exploitative relationship filled with manipulation, power grabs and dysfunction at its finest,” notes the synopsis.

The Shrink Next Door streams Fridays on Apple TV+