The last time I spoke with TV producer and writer Mike Schur — the co-creator of comedy classics like Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, and the creator behind Netflix’s new A Man on the Inside — he was pretty sanguine about the way the TV landscape has changed. Mind you, this was just before the pandemic, which is to say the medium has continued to take huge leaps forward since then. But his comments to me nevertheless feel instructive as he prepares to launch his latest series, starring Ted Danson, on the biggest streamer of them all.
“I’ve been saying to writing staffs for a really long time now that there’s exactly one thing you can control, and it’s the quality of the show,” Schur told me. “You can’t control the marketing, the audience reaction, the word-of-mouth. I mean, for god’s sake, You was on Lifetime and almost died and then went to Netflix and now it’s this huge hit and everybody can’t stop talking about it.
“The paths these shows take toward finding audiences are just bizarre and completely unpredictable. You control what you can control and put it out into the world and say, ‘Here’s a thing we think is good, and hopefully somebody over the next year will agree.’ I think anything else is sort of a fool’s errand.”
Spoiler alert: His new show, starring the always-charming Danson as a man who’s stuck in a rut and finds a renewed sense of purpose in life, is very good.
In the eight-episode Netflix series, which debuts on Thursday, Danson is a retired professor named Charles who answers an ad from a private detective looking to solve a mysterious theft. It requires Charles to go undercover as a new resident at a senior living community, where he builds heartwarming new connections and bonds with his daughter along the way.
The series is actually an adaptation of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Mole Agent. “I knew almost nothing about [The Mole Agent], and I just fell for it so hard,” Schur told Netflix’s Tudum. “The hero, Sergio, is so wonderfully wrought, so real, just a lovely human being. It’s a beautiful meditation on aging, a subject we are uniquely terrible at confronting, dealing with, or discussing in this country. It showed the reality of aging for people along a very broad spectrum — some folks who were doing great and some folks who were not — and that really grabbed me.”
A Man on the Inside, in turn, is going to grab many of its own viewers thanks to its leading man. Whether as Sam Malone on Cheers or the eccentric but warm-hearted Michael on The Good Place, Danson has a spark I’m not even sure I could properly describe — but one that nevertheless makes him a beloved actor thanks to his comedic timing and irrepressible charm, all of which are on full display in A Man on the Inside.
Just admit it, you know you’re probably stressed out right now, whether because of the state of the world or maybe the way your job is going. We all need a bit of relief now and then, and what better way to take the edge off than by enjoying this actually meaningful new comedy from Netflix, which has something to say about the ability one has to live a bigger and richer life with age — that getting older, in fact, doesn’t have to mean a person is inevitably less useful or interesting. Dear Netflix: More TV like this, please.
