Ted Danson isn’t getting older, he’s getting better.
This isn’t entirely true. The star of beloved comedies including Cheers and The Good Place isn’t getting any younger (he’s 76), because no one is. But as the titular hero of the poignant comedy series A Man on the Inside, Danson enjoys one of his best roles in years, rising to the challenge of playing a lonely widower who finds new purpose, and potentially lasting friendships (though always clouded by mortality), when he takes on a new mission by going undercover in a retirement home.
Inspired by the Oscar-nominated documentary The Mole Agent, creator Mike Schur (Parks and Recreation, The Good Place) crafts a charming fable that strikes a wistful chord in its warm depiction of the elderly residents who reside at San Francisco’s extraordinarily posh Pacific View Retirement Home—which is to retirement facilities what the Friends apartment was to real-life NYC apartment living.
Danson brings wise empathy and an undercurrent of ageless enthusiasm to the role of Charles, a retired engineering professor who’s adrift after the death a year earlier of his wife, who succumbed to the ravages of Alzheimer’s. His daughter Emily (the terrific Mary Elizabeth Ellis), raising an unruly trio of boys in Sacramento with a supportive husband (Eugene Cordero), frets that her dad needs something to fill his empty days, a hobby to revive his spirits.
Netflix
Taking up this “Charles challenge,” he answers a newspaper ad from acerbic private eye Julie (wry Lilah Richcreek Estrada), who’s seeking an insider to enter Pacific View under false pretenses. The goal: unmask a thief who allegedly stole a resident’s jeweled heirloom. Giddy with excitement at the idea of playing spy, and even more fulfilled at the thought of being useful again, the dapper Charles enters the world of Pacific View, where he’s almost immediately disarmed by the variety of life still evident amid these golden girls and guys.
The mystery angle recedes though never entirely goes away as Charles is welcomed into this thriving community. (He is, however, momentarily overcome when he spies the closed-off “Neighborhood” memory care unit, reminding him of what he’s lost.) Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz sets the tone as hands-on administrator Didi, an unflappable if overwhelmed beacon of congenial professionalism. She senses something’s not quite right with Charles’ cover story, but his instant popularity at Pacific View soon wins her over. For a while.
The myriad delights of A Man on the Inside include a supporting cast of seasoned character actors, their familiar faces weathered by time but still very much in the game of delivering the comedy goods. Chief among them is All in the Family icon Sally Struthers as man-hungry Virginia, Margaret Avery (The Color Purple) as her poet BFF Florence, Susan Ruttan (L.A. Law) as the sweet but mentally fragile Gladys, John Getz as curmudgeonly Elliott, who sees Charles as a “sexual rival,” Lori Tan Chinn as Susan, the crabby president of the resident council, Veronica Cartwright as the devout Beverly, and most indelibly, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Calbert, a backgammon fiend who becomes Charles’ closest friend.
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While Charles grows attached to his new acquaintances, exasperating his impatient boss Julie on the outside, there’s an undertow of melancholy when he observes how an aging dad like Calbert feels neglected by their busy offspring and how even the Pacific View community begins to detach from those they see slipping away like Gladys. The specter of death, sometimes lingering and sometimes sudden, always lingers, and yet life goes on.
While we may be eager to learn who among them might actually be a jewel thief, as the episodes breeze by, you’ll begin to worry what will happen if and when Charles’s masquerade is exposed.
As someone who’s seen their own remarkable mom thrive in an assisted-living environment before moving permanently into the fog of memory care, I found A Man on the Inside to be incredibly moving as well as entertaining, frequently fighting back tears as I reveled in this showcase for some of TV’s most precious and still shining stars.
A Man on the Inside, Series Premiere (eight episodes), Thursday, November 21, Netflix
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