A Man on the Inside: Ted Danson’s cosy crime comedy is a salve for the soul

In theory, A Man on the Inside could fall into the sub-genre of cosy crime, but the Ted Danson series is doing so much more than trying to solve the central mystery.

The mystery is merely a plot mechanism to propel Danson’s character into the story, a MacGuffin you almost forget about as the emotional layers of the real story is revealed. The series is inspired by the documentary The Mole Agent.

Danson plays Charles, a retired engineering professor who lives in San Francisco. Since his wife’s death from Alzheimer’s a year earlier, Charles has been floundering. He lacks purpose to his days, besides cutting out interesting news articles from the paper and mailing them to his adult daughter, Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis).

Emily implores him to find a hobby, and that’s when he sees a classified ad from a private investigator looking for an older man who can infiltrate a retirement community called Pacific Heights.

The PI, Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada), needs a man on the inside to help her investigate the case of a missing necklace.

The crime is low stakes but there’s a lot of fun to be had watching Charles trying to suss out all the residents and whether they might have a motive for pilfering the ruby-adorned accessory.

From a not-so-subtle shadowing one of his neighbours to an external meeting, to setting up a sting by luring the potential thief with a Rolex, the mild hijinks are amusing — and Danson is a master at light-hearted comedy.

But the real meat of the show is Charles connecting with the people he’s meant to be spying on. The manager of the retirement community, Didi (Stephanie Beatriz), says at the beginning that the greatest danger to the elderly is not a fall or injury but loneliness.

At an age when their partners and friends are dying and people fall away from their lives, maintaining substantive relationships can be a challenge, and it certainly has been for Charles.

This might have started as an assignment so he had something to do, but Charles instead finds real friends among the residents — these characters are played by great actors including Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sally Struthers, John Getz, Margaret Avery and Susan Ruttan.

A Man on the Inside is a real heart-warmer. And if you’re familiar with the work of American TV writer Mike Schur, then you’d know this is what you were in for.

Schur got his start on Saturday Night Live but really honed his craft writing for The Office US and then going to co-create or create Parks & Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place and Rutherford Falls.

Besides Danson, who was on The Good Place, and Beatriz, who was Rosa on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, expect to see some other familiar faces from the Schur cinematic universe pop in for cameos.

What all of Schur’s shows have in common is that, at their core, they are optimistic about people’s innate decency. People are flawed and they make mistakes, behave in ways you wouldn’t do, but in the end, they’ll come through.

Schur also has a strict rule about not punching down in his comedy — and given how reliably funny and entertaining they are, it debunks all those “provocateur” old-school comedians who get their hackles up when asked to be a little less unnecessarily inoffensive.

His shows are a delight to watch, they brighten your day, restore your belief in humanity and bathe you in an overall feeling of warmth and that, no matter what’s going on in the world, it has to be OK in the end.

A Man on the Inside is exactly that — a salve for the soul.

A Man on the Inside is streaming on Netflix