A Man on the Inside

Review by Brian Slade

Ted Danson has something of the golden touch when it comes to TV shows (quickly skirting over Mr Mayor). From his first major success in Cheers, he has become the American equivalent of a national treasure, and after his success in The Good Place, writer Michael Schur called on him again to play Charles, a lonely widower who rediscovers his zest for life as an undercover spy at a retirement community in the Netflix smash A Man on the Inside.

Charles Niewendyk‘s life has been turned upside down by the death of his wife, the love of his life who he was supposed to grow old with. But now, while still in good health and with a wonderful house to rattle around with, she is gone, and he is lost. Having packed her belongings into the garage within a day of her departure, he how spends his time visiting the park, eating alone, and cutting clippings of what he feels are interesting stories or reviews in newspapers to mail to his daughter in Sacramento. Daughter Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis - Santa Clarita Diet) was more connected with her departed mother, and her time is balanced between work and her husband Joel (Eugene Cordero - Central Park) and her three teenage sons, all of whom consider life to be enclosed within the apps of their mobile phones.

In San Francisco, private investigator Julie Kovalenko (Lilah Richcreek Estrada - Chicago Med) is taking the unusual approach of turning down a customer looking to employ her services. Evan Cubbler (Marc Evan Jackson - Parks and Recreation) wants her to investigate the disappearance of a valuable ruby necklace owned by his mother that has gone missing from the retirement community in which she resides, albeit he’s more concerned that she will leave the home to live with him than he is with the crime itself. But then Julie has an idea. While she cannot easily infiltrate what she sees as a closed ecosystem, she can find an elderly man to place into the Pacific View Retirement Community and have him do the groundwork without getting caught.

Struggling for purpose and lacking anything meaningful in his life, Charles is given a challenge by his daughter to find something that excites him. What he came up with was definitely not what she had in mind. He decides to reply to the add placed by Kovalenko. With an array of unsuitable applicants discarded, Julie agrees to hire Charles based on the career he retired from, a professor in engineering, and the fact that he can handle technology enough to send a picture using his phone!

Julie isn’t convinced once she has tried training Charles in such things as photography and observation skills, but Charles is so excited at the idea of being a spy that he convinces her that he’s the right man for the job…but of course, he chooses not to tell his daughter of the new focus he has found in his life. He tells her he is taking classes at the home.

Masquerading as Charles’s daughter, Julia takes Charles to meet Didi (Stephanie Beatriz - Brooklyn Nine-Nine), the managing director of the home. In amongst displaying the array of classes available to Charles, there’s a nod to The Good Place as they pass by a section of the home simply called The Neighborhood, where residents in need of 24-hour memory care are located. It’s the first occurrence where the warmth of the writing comes through. Charles is not so sure now as his wife passed away from Alzheimer’s and he’s torn between his childlike enthusiasm for playing the spy and his facing the horrors of his wife’s departure and the loneliness it has left him. It’s Julia that convinces him to re-join the world.

What follows is a comical and yet heartfelt journey with Charles as he befriends the various residents and staff of the facility. With a ratio of six women to one man, his arrival causes somewhat of a stir with the ladies of Pacific View. After encountering some eccentrics and feeling too out of place to join the breakfast, the first to welcome him are Virginia and Florence. They are the unofficial welcoming committee, and they know all the tricks and the do’s and dont’s of people in the know. Virginia (Sally Struthers - All In The Family) is somewhat of a flirt, and it’s her flirting that first gets Charles in trouble with a male rival – Elliott Haverhill (John Getz - Another World), who claims to already be engaged to Virginia and is extremely unhappy with the threat of Charles’s arrival.

As he begins to settle, Charles enjoys the company of Gladys (Susan Ruttan - L.A. Law), a former costume designer who misses the theatre, and a man who becomes his best friend at the home – Calbert Graham (Stephen McKinley Henderson - Devs), a quiet and lonely backgammon player who begins to find his spirit again with his newfound friend.

As Charles settles into the community within the home, his spy work begins to blur with his rediscovery of his place in the world. But his time at the facility is of course reliant on his crime-solving capabilities, and people begin to suspect he may not have been entirely truthful about his life and his reason for being there. It also doesn’t help that his daughter arrives to confuse the situation.

The Good Place had a good heart running through it, particularly towards its conclusion, and that same quality comes through in A Man on the Inside. Creator and writer Michael Schur, who based the show on the award-winning documentary The Mole Agent, strikes a wonderful balance between intelligent comedy and heartfelt drama. The challenges of old age and the loneliness it can bring are dealt with sympathetically but never patronisingly, and the comedy provides a perfect balance to the more melancholic moments. Danson is of course the perfect figurehead for a fine ensemble cast, and he has the audience in his corner from the first moment to the last.

Despite Charles solving the mystery to provide a rounded ending to the show, the door was conveniently left open for further series of A Man on the Inside. Recognising a hit when they see one, it’s fully justified that Netflix have been quick to recommission what is undoubtedly one of their finest shows of recent years.