The latest Michael Schur comedy is a very welcome star vehicle for Ted Danson, playing retired college professor Charles Nieuwendyk, who is given an unusual employment opportunity. Private investigator Julie Kovalenko (Lilah Richcreek Estrada) has been hired to look into a theft at a San Francisco retirement home, and needs a senior citizen to be her "man on the inside." Charles fits the bill, and is delighted at the prospect of playing spy and detective. However, he unexpectedly finds himself connecting to the residents and staff of Pacific View Retirement Community during his assignment.
While the investigative aspect of "A Man on the Inside" provides a nice hook, and carries through the whole season, the show is really about Pacific View, a very affluent and well-maintained senior care facility that is populated by a wealth of older character actors like Sally Struthers, Clyde Kusatsu, and Veronica Cartwright. The facility is managed day to day by the dedicated director Didi Santos Cordero (Stephanie Beatriz), who becomes a major POV character. Julie is also a constant presence, regularly getting updates from Charles and keeping him on track. She impersonates Charles' daughter Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) during the investigation. The actual Emily lives in Sacramento with her husband Joel (Eugene Cordero) and their three screen-addicted boys, but tries to stay in her father's life as much as she can. So, we've got both older and younger characters to represent a lot of different perspectives, keeping a nice balance in the cast.
"A Man on the Inside" is all around a very pleasant, very heartfelt show. It tackles some difficult subjects at times, such as Charles addressing the lingering emotional issues from the death of his wife, and a woman named Gladys (Susan Ruttan) at Pacific View who starts having memory issues. However, it's got a great mix of comic actors and the premise is a lot of fun. Charles spends most of the early episodes trying to get the hang of being undercover, which is not as easy as it looks. He makes a lot of mistakes and gets himself into a lot of misunderstandings, earning him a grumpy rival named Elliott (John Getz), but also some genuine new friends, like Virginia (Struthers), Flo (Margaret Avery), and Calbert (Stephen McKinley Henderson).
I really appreciate the way the humor in the show is pitched a little slower and more gently than most modern sitcoms. As you'd expect, there are a lot of jokes about the main characters being old and out of touch, but it's always with a lot of sympathy and compassion. Probably the edgiest jokes involve a few digs about Elliott being a misogynist, but there's not much bite to them. Most of the laughs are very character based, and a lot of it boils down to Charles being this irrepressibly curious and genial man, suddenly thrust into a new environment where his odd behavior can often be excused as eccentricity. Ted Danson is an absolute delight every moment he's onscreen, and I'm so glad that he and Michael Schur got another chance to collaborate after "The Good Place."
"A Man on the Inside" is loosely based on a Chilean documentary, "The Mole Agent," where the ornery undercover senior citizen its center was more intent on advocating for the forgotten residents of the senior home that he infiltrated. "A Man on the Inside" is more of a typical American sitcom, and while it touches on many of the same themes, and has plenty of moments of poignancy, it comes from a very different point of view. The Schur universe is a much nicer place, where everyone is fundamentally good at heart, and Pacific View is an unusually well-run community where everyone cares about each other. I prefer to think of it as not so much unrealistic as aspirational.
Also, extra kudos for the San Francisco setting, which makes me very nostalgic.
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