You’d be hard pressed to find a performer who has been as resilient and as popular over the past four decades and change as Ted Danson. No, he never did quite below the theatrical breakout his phenomenal early success as a breakout sitcom performer might have foreshadowed; he’s not and will never be John Travolta. On the other hand, he hasn’t quite yet been reduced to shilling for T Mobile.
What he is doing lately is actually much more impressive, as FILM.COM’s Pauli Poisuo told his readers yesterday:
Danson is back on top, people — literally. The actor, who has surfed from success to success with his offbeat and comedic projects in recent years, is adding to his increasingly impressive mountain of victories with his newest comedy series, Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside.” Showrunner Michael Schur’s latest offering has already resonated with the streaming platform’s audience, since it shot right to the top of Netflix’s list of Top 10 TV shows.
If that name seems familiar, it’s because Schur was the showrunner of the show that returned Danson to NBC’s storied Thursday night lineup–or at least the weakened late 2010s version of it As Poisuo recounted:
A crucial component of the success of “A Man on the Inside” success is no doubt the collaboration between Danson and creator Michael Schur. The last time they joined forces resulted in the classic NBC sitcom “The Good Place,” so who wouldn’t be keen to see what they’ve cooked up since that four-season show ended in 2020?
Even without “The Good Place,” of course, both Danson and Schur have been on a reliable roll that makes it easy to dive into their work. The former is known to tackle plenty of interesting roles, like playing a fictionalized version of himself on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” or the kind yet deeply overwhelmed Sheriff Hank Larsson on “Fargo” season 2. Meanwhile, Schur’s producing accolades include little shows like “The Office,” “Parks and Recreation,” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine.”
I’m not quite sure I can refer to a show that didn’t exist until 2016 as “classic”, but I can subscribe to the fact that Schur is arguably one of the most prolific and bankable talents in Universal’s arsenal. So it might be surprising at first to see this project turn up on Netflix, as opposed to Peacock. Netflix and Universal do have a positive history of collaborating on layered, risk-taking comedies; the most successful of which was the delightfully zany UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT. But that was before Peacock became a reality. One might think why Peacock didn’t jump at this.
Except when you consider the pedigree of what inspired Schur, it’s arguably a far bigger risk than a service that just doubled down on REAL HOUSEWIVES content might have been comfortable with. SLATE’s Sam Adams elaborated in his review that accompanied last week’s drop:
In Maite Alberdi’s documentary The Mole Agent, an elderly Chilean man goes undercover inside a nursing home to investigate charges that one of the residents is being abused and taken advantage of. In A Man on the Inside, the new Netflix series based—very loosely—on Alberdi’s movie, the stakes are lowered substantially. Rather than elder abuse, Charles Nieuwendyk (Ted Danson), a retired professor of engineering and recent widower, is employed to root out the person behind the disappearance of a ruby necklace that may not have been worth that much in the first place. As is true of the other worlds created by Michael Schur, no one here is cruel or mean-spirited in any particularly pernicious way—even The Good Place’s demons were more like gleeful pranksters than the embodiment of evil. Tempers occasionally run short, and misunderstandings abound, but for the most part, everyone tries their best, and it’s rarely enough.
Over the course of a breezily paced and highly bingeable first season, both the plot and Nieuwendyk unfold, with some surprising twists and turns along the way. And in a similar manner where the underlying inspiration of Kimmy Schmidt’s unbreakability having survived an adolescence spent in a bunker as a prisoner of a mad cult leader, a world where physical and mental fraility are the norm provides some worthwhile lessons for both character and viewer, as Adams added:
Underlying A Man on the Inside’s eight half-hour episodes…is an understanding that life is hard enough without introducing the conflicts and threats that are usually the stuff of drama. The biggest threat to an older person’s well-being, explains the home’s director, Didi (Stephanie Beatriz), isn’t illness or injury: It’s loneliness, a condition that survival only makes more acute. If Charles makes a lousy spy, especially at first, it’s partly because he’s unpracticed in the art of subterfuge, but it’s also, we come to understand, because his people skills have been atrophying for years, as he’s traded the college lecture hall for a quiet crossword at the breakfast table (he does it in ink, of course) and spent months with his grief as his primary companion. He’s supposed to be keeping a low profile and not drawing the other residents’ notice, but when a man who looks like Ted Danson walks into a facility where women outnumber men several times over, that’s an impossibility, and the attention hits him like a narcotic—well, that and the weed he ends up smoking after his welcome party.
It’s spit-take comedy with depth, and at this point in his career and life it’s a role that fits Danson like a glove. And surrounded by a talented cast of co-stars that also includes the likes of Mary Elizabeth Ellis…Sally Struthers, and Stephen McKinley Henderson (the latter a real standout) , it’s a similar reminder that an effort like ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING cements in our heads–just because there’s a little more snow on the roof than the glory days of NBC yore, folks in their 70s can still carry a program and actually endear themselves to a generation that has only discovered what kickstarted their careers through streaming algorithms. Danson quickly reminds you he’s still got the essence of Sam Malone inside him, and this time with what appears to be a more realistic toupee.
The only risk I see to this quickly earning a renewal is the fact that Netflix is a wealth of riches and shooting on location in San Francisco isn’t all that cheap, which doesn’t necessary gel with the mission statements of either platform or provider. But I’d contend that for something as good as this is at least provider should take note of this success. Should this somehow not sustain itself on Netflix’s metric barometer over time, Peacock could definitely make use of this. And, for that matter, so could NBC.
Until next time…