Ted Danson Charms in the Slight, Bittersweet A Man on the Inside

Earlier this year my 78-year-old dad fell 12 feet while rebuilding his deck and utterly wrecked himself. A broken back, 13 broken ribs, a punctured lung… that one fall gave him the worst three or four injuries he’s ever had in his life, at an age that many dads don’t even live to. He spent two months in the hospital under the care of doctors who later admitted they didn’t think he would make it. He’s been home and doing well for months now, but he’s still not the healthy, active, extravagantly self-sufficient man he was just seven months ago, and never really will be again. So to say I’ve been thinking about mortality and preparing for a world without my parents lately is an understatement; it’s no surprise, then, that A Man on the Inside hit me particularly hard.

The new Netflix comedy from Michael Schur (Parks & Recreation, The Good Place) stars Ted Danson (you know who he is) as Charles Nieuwendyk, a retired engineering professor straining to adjust to life without his wife a year after she passed from complications of Alzheimer’s. It strikes at one of the cruelest ironies of our time here on Earth: if you and your loved ones are lucky enough to live long lives, you’ll inevitably watch each other struggle and fade as you grow old. A Man on the Inside explores that grief and sense of loss with a relatively soft hand, but also makes a point of showing the still-vibrant and active lives we can lead deep into our 70s and 80s, and all without ever feeling too maudlin or schmaltzy. It doesn’t have the rapid-fire jokes of Parks & Rec or Schur’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, or the inspired silliness of The Good Place, but A Man on the Inside is another pleasant comedy full of likable characters from Schur, although one that will almost definitely make you cry if you’ve ever had to sit by as a family member or friend slowed down due to health issues. 

Oh, I should probably mention that it’s also a detective show.

The name sums it up: the healthy and self-reliant Charles doesn’t move into San Francisco’s (no-doubt ungodly expensive) Pacific View Retirement Home because he doesn’t have family or needs around-the-clock care. He’s there because he answered a Craigslist ad by a private detective (played by Lilah Richcreek Estrada) looking for a senior citizen to go undercover to help find the culprit behind a series of robberies in the home. Given his love of Le Carre and Grafton novels (a habit hit upon during an early episode montage of Charles’ daily routine), the prospect of being a man on the inside appeals to Charles, who has so much free time that he regularly clips and snail mails interesting newspaper articles to his daughter in Sacramento (played by Always Sunny’s Mary Elizabeth Ellis). Charles goes to work as a homemade cop, and if you’ve ever watched any television in your life you can probably already guess that what he finds are valuable friendships and greater self-awareness. 

There’s a large circle of possible suspects at Pacific View, from the seemingly too-chipper-to-be-true managing director Didi (played by Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Stephanie Beatriz) to resident flirt Virginia (Sally Strothers, one of many familiar faces who pop up throughout the show). Charles quickly ingratiates himself into the community without even trying that hard (it helps to be as charismatic and handsome as Ted Danson), and strikes up an especially tender friendship with Calbert, a grumpy loner played by the always-excellent Stephen McKinley Henderson. A Man on the Inside depicts the relationships and rivalries between these retirees matter-of-factly, without any of the hackneyed, disrespectful “can you believe old people are like this?” nonsense so common in pop culture, and Danson and Henderson in particular make for a very affable duo.

Danson’s undercover nature tends to slip out of focus a little bit in the second half of the series, as Charles grows increasingly comfortable in Pacific View. The case almost becomes an afterthought for Charles himself, despite regular check-ins with Estrada’s P.I. His friendship with Calbert comes to the fore, and their easy conversation over games of Othello might be the most enjoyable of A Man on the Inside’s modest joys. 

More affecting, though, is Charles grappling with his wife’s death—or, more precisely, the shame and guilt over his feeling that her death was a relief from the pain and personality-changing damages of Alzheimer’s. Her condition, which is shared by Charles’ new friend Gladys (played by Susan Ruttan, who was a perennial Emmy nominee for L.A. Law), is smartly never played for laughs, and Pacific View’s memory care unit sets off Charles’ insecurity and depression so prominently and immediately that you know it’s going to be a major plot point later in the season. This is where the tears kick in: watching Danson, a beloved TV actor for decades now 40 years past his signature role, show vulnerability and weakness in a work explicitly about our inevitable end and the physical and mental decline that can precede it should hit close to home for anybody, and especially those who have witnessed this first hand in their own families. 

The word that I most want to use to describe A Man on the Inside is pleasant, but that doesn’t really feel right for a show that made me cry hard at least twice. Watching somebody you love grow old and sick is absolutely gutting, but the fact that A Man on the Inside captures that without pulling its punches, and while still remaining a likable, charming show, just reinforces how good Schur is at making pleasant, cozy, amiable comedies. I wouldn’t expect that a show that hit on a nerve as raw and fresh as my father’s catastrophic injuries could feasibly be called feelgood, but Schur showed he and his writers could turn serious issues into relatively light entertainment on The Good Place and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, so I shouldn’t be too surprised. (Of course any show that ends both its first and last episodes with an Olivia Tremor Control song will earn almost infinite good will from me.) 

Despite dealing thoughtfully and gently with emotional issues that are universal to the human experience, though, A Man on the Inside ultimately feels a little slight. It doesn’t try to be as consistently funny as Schur’s earlier sitcoms, but it also (thankfully) doesn’t go for the kind of big dramatic swings that can win awards and make shows go viral. It’s the kind of short-term project that would not have had much opportunity to get made before cable and streaming changed how American TV operates. A Man on the Inside does what it wants and needs to do with sturdy precision, and doesn’t need to stick around any longer—embracing its end with the dignity and grace we’ll hopefully all know when our time is up.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.

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