by Jacob Harrington, Contributor

For the past two months, Harrison Ford has been doing some career best work on two separate streaming TV shows. One is a big budget Western epic and prequel to runaway mega hit Yellowstone. The other is a traditional sitcom dramedy from the creators of Ted Lasso. Both of these shows make for good to wonderful TV. His performance in both is nuanced and moving. How did this come to pass?

Film actors used to not do much work in television. Remember that? They used to be somewhat separate entities. The lines slowly, but surely, blurred. If you ask five different people when the big shift happened, they will all probably cite five different shows from five different years. Maybe it was George Clooney on ER. Maybe it was when Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall did Lonesome Dove. Maybe it was when Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern did Big Little Lies. However and whenever we got there, we got there. Movie stars are TV stars now too.

As someone who was introduced and thoroughly world rocked by Star Wars and Indiana Jones as a young child, Harrison Ford was probably the first actor I was familiar enough with to be a fan of. I ran around the backyard with one of my sister’s jump ropes on my hip as a makeshift bullwhip. To me, being the star of two separate and fantastic action-adventure trilogies made this guy the biggest movie star in the world. I think that’s part of why his filmography and career have gone the way they have—if you play two of the most iconic hero characters of all time, it might be hard to get out of their shadows sometimes.

Anytime something good gets made it’s a miracle, and anytime someone does consistently great work over decades it’s a treasure that they kept the ship afloat. I think Ford is a fantastic actor and a fascinating person. I don’t think that Ford has been bad, or even phoned it in, in anything I’ve seen him in.

Ford’s third act performance in Blade Runner 2049 gave me chills and stuck with me. His performance as an older, weary Rick Deckard is so resilient and human. Not to knock The Force Awakens in which Ford’s performance is one of the best parts, but Blade Runner 2049 is the legacy performance of his that really made me think, “there you go.” Here is a movie that matches what he brings to it. It’s a terrific performance that made me feel a cascade of emotions.

Ford stars as Jacob Dutton in Taylor Sheridan’s sprawling Western epic 1923. I will spare you all the details about Sheridan’s Paramount backed television blank check empire because I have already written about it extensively last year. 1923 is the second prequel series to Yellowstone, the most popular show on TV. Jacob is the brother of 1883’s Tim McGraw’s James Dutton. 1883 followed the original Dutton family members long, miserable trek on the Oregon Trail to settle the land that would become the Yellowstone ranch. Whereas 1883 was about the wild frontier of the American west, 1923 is about modern times encroaching on the west. It isn’t just the pioneers in Montana and Oregon now. City slickers and money men are on the journey west and bought the East Coast’s ways with them.

There is a lot going on in 1923 that I will not get into because it’s truly an enormous scale story and very much worth watching. There is a huge b plot about the Dutton’s from 1883’s adult son Spencer served who served in the First World War. Jacob Dutton and his wife Cara, played by Helen Mirren, raised his brother’s sons as their own. Since the war ended, Spencer has remained overseas, working as a hunter and guide for rich European in Africa. He meets a British woman they have an epic whirlwind romance. Then he gets a letter from his aunt saying that his uncle has been severely injured and may not live, and that they need his help to protect the ranch. So begins his epic, long, and extremely expensive, for a television production, journey from Africa to Montana.

That’s where it gets interesting—Ford’s Jacob Dutton very nearly gets killed in the third episode as a range war breaks out and Jerome Flynn’s Irish sheep farmer villain Banner Creighton blasts Ford with a tommy gun. In the episodes that follow Cara nurses Jacob back to health and runs the ranch while running interference and hiding just close to death Jacob is. It’s not an accident that Spencer, played by Brandon Sklenar, looks like a lot like a young Indiana Jones.

When Taylor Sheridan met with Ford and Mirren, there was no script yet. Sheridan wanted to know who he was writing for and didn’t want to write with actors in mind only to learn they were not available. This worked out incredibly well. This part was written for Ford, encompassing his macho heroism, his age, and his long career of playing heroes despite his age. It’s a role that really uses and builds upon his entire career. His nephew Spencer is the dangerous young killer Jacob needs, and that he used to be. At one point he tells his other nephew that he guesses he’ll have to learn to shoot with his left hand now because his right is too numb.

There is a scene where a healing Jacob is bought outside by his doctors so he can get some sunlight. He looks frail, pale, and old. There is another scene where he stares at the staircase in the main ranch house, sizing up whether or not he’s able to get up them without asking his wife for help. My father has been struggling with some health issues and, well, I found these scenes incredibly moving. Ford plays them with lived-in nuance and experience.

It’s not like he doesn’t know that he’s old. He has been doing a lot of interviews around these two shows and I’ve read many of them. He is a really smart man. But this role, written for him, is a relative first in this stage of his career. He is still playing the hero, but a hero who is aging and can’t be the capable defender his family needs him to be. Ford gets a couple of lengthy monologues on the nature of revenge and why they need to preserve the ranch that I really think is some career bests acting. Paired with equally remarkable work from Mirren, as she nurses him back to health with a mix of extraordinary patience and frustration, it’s excellent stuff. Ford and Mirren have many scenes together that are profound, some where she really goes off on him, saying that nursing him back to health and almost a losing him hasn’t been exactly easy for her either. Aging isn’t easy or pretty, but it can be beautiful.

1923 will return for a second season sometime probably late this year. Its original one-off series order was expanded into a two season 16 episode order.

Apple’s Shrinking comes from two of the creators of Ted Lasso, Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, and Jason Segel. I personally think the sunshine has moved on from Ted Lasso, but that’s just me. It’s an undeniably charming show with emotional nuance and depth to its plucky sitcom world. The same formula is applied to Shrinking. Jason Segel’s Jimmy is a widowed therapist who we meet about a year after the death of his wife. He spent most of that year spiraling into grief, being a distant father, and sleep walking through his work. The larger premise of the show is that Jimmy is tired of giving his patients the advice he has to give them as a therapist. Instead, he starts telling them what he wishes he could say and what he thinks they need to hear.

Jessica Williams and Harrison Ford, as the leader of their practice, play his coworkers. There is a lovely ensemble of actors here being funny and sincere in spades, but Ford is really who gets to shine. As Paul he is remarkably funny, warm, gruff, and wise all at once. When we meet Jimmy and he begins to experiment with the idea of telling his patients the truth instead of what he should say as a therapist, Paul’s reaction is adamant denial. Paul is Jimmy’s mentor and boss—Jimmy wants his respect and admiration. Some of the plot lines work better than others, but all the broad strokes are great. Bill Lawrence certainly knows how to manage an ensemble, bouncing between funny and sincere.

What we learn about Paul as the season progresses is that he has Parkinson’s disease, something he keeps hidden from his coworkers and daughter for as long as he can. He is still himself, but he’s fighting to stay that way. One episode finds him struggling to keep driving, refusing to admit that maybe it’s time to stop. Paul keeps his personal life separate from his work, but all the chaos of Jimmy’s life spills over into his. In some of the best scenes of the show, Jimmy’s daughter Alice, played by Lukita Maxwell, and Paul meet on a park bench for something between a friendly chat and a secret therapy session. As icy as Paul’s demeanor is, he knows Jimmy is struggling with immense grief and that his daughter might need some guidance. These scenes with Jimmy’s daughter are Ford’s best—Paul is struggling with his own daughter too, and he just want to help the child of his coworker, and maybe even his friend, navigate her grief. He tells her to help manager her grief, set aside fifteen minutes a day, listen to a really sad song, and feel it all at once.

When Paul does finally tell his daughter, played by Lilly Rabe, about his Parkinson’s diagnosis, he’s overcoming a lot of fear. He values the independent and self-sufficient life that he’s built for himself and doesn’t want to worry her. Seeing Ford, as an elder statesman who is both gruff and soft, full of emotional intelligence and stubbornness all at once, makes this a role that is just remarkably well suited for him.

He is also very funny. In one wonderful scene he sings Sugar Ray’s “Every Morning” with Jessica Williams as she drives them to work. Bill Lawrence makes television that ping pongs from lighthearted to serious. Scrubs and Ted Lasso are both shows could make you laugh and cry in a span of ten minutes. Watching Ford deal with Segel’s bumbling, chaotic life let’s him really get to lean into his dry delivery and simmering impatience. Before Paul tells his daughter about his diagnosis, he goes to an engagement party at Jimmy’s house and eats an edible, getting way too high. Christa Miller, one of the best parts of the show as Jimmy’s neighbor, talks him down.

I think these two roles are really exciting and ideal for Ford at this point in his career, with the pathos of all the roles that came before and how long he’s been on our screens. I can only hope that the upcoming fifth Indiana Jones gives him an equally nuanced script to work with. It’s also kind of remarkable that one of the biggest movie stars alive is on TV! Every week! And is coming back for more! We see him from a new angle in these two roles. Elder statesman, offering wisdom and guidance to people younger than him, trying to maintain the life he’s built for himself, trying to not let time get the best of him. I am convinced that he may end up nominated for Emmys in both drama and comedy, and both would be well deserved. Watching him in these two shows throughout February and March just made me immensely happy that he’s still here and still doing wonderful work.