What do we do when we get old?
A Man on the Inside on Netflix is a quirky, heartfelt detective story that goes beyond the “who-done-it” theft narrative. It’s a heartfelt, lovely story and watch.
Charles, played by Ted Danson, is pushed by his daughter to find a hobby that isn’t clipping articles out of the newspaper. He comes across an advert for a private detective agency looking for someone to go undercover inside the Pacific View Retirement Community.
Bored and lonely, he takes the gig and moves in as a resident, joining chair yoga and art classes and bingo nights to quietly gather scraps of clues.
A retirement home setting places life and death next to each other. The activities to stay active and connecting in community are carried out while knowing your chess partner may not be there for the next game.
There is also the cruelty of adult children who drop their parents off and vanish. It’s painful to witness the loneliness.
But there is so much care and reconnection and love from others to try and fill the abyss.
The creators say the show was inspired by the Oscar-nominated Chilean documentary The Mole Agent, and cast Danson immediately for the lead role.
Writer-producer Mike Schur is excellent at grounding comedy in settings with characters feeling like real people you would meet at the shops or in line at home affairs. He made The Office, Parks and Recreation (my personal comfort show and rewatch) and The Good Place, which also starred Danson. His worlds — in which he builds writing, characters and humour — always feel like they come from lived experience. We connect with the story. Woven into the mystery are moments of real human ache. The grief that comes with a brain getting older and more forgetful, the heartbreak of watching someone you love slowly disappear, their body still here but without their mind or memory. It’s tender and surprisingly moving. And rare.
We don’t get many stories about old age or get to see older actors front and centre.
A few shows have given space to characters past sixty, like Grace and Frankie with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, another great show on Netflix.
Season one of A Man on the Inside was released in September 2024 and season two comes out at the end of November.
The show holds a 90% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes with audiences calling it “gentle”, “underrated”, and “the rare comedy that actually understands ageing”.
It’s warm, funny, quietly devastating in places, and well worth a weekend watch.
