Saturday Night Live. The Comeback. The Office. Parks and Recreation. Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The Good Place. Rutherford Falls. What do all these shows (and the best baseball blog of all-time) have in common? Michael Schur.
Regis Philbin’s son-in-law (it’s true) has either written for and/or created all of them. He’s one of the most important names in comedy this century, and soon, his new show will premiere on Netflix.
Here’s everything to know about A Man on the Inside, including the plot, cast (featuring reunions with The Good Place and B99 stars), and release date.
Plot
A Man on the Inside follows retired widower Charles, played by Cheers and The Good Place legend Ted Danson, who “answers an ad from a private detective to solve a mysterious theft. Posing as a new resident, he goes deep undercover at a senior living community, building heartwarming new friendships and a stronger bond with his daughter along the way,” according to Netflix’s logline. If the premise doesn’t immediately grab you, well, you probably thought that about The Good Place (ethical dilemmas), Parks and Recreation (politics), and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (cops), too, and those turned out pretty good.
The eight-episode series is based on the 2020 documentary The Mole Agent, which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film at the Oscars; it lost to My Octopus Teacher. Schur called the doc “one of the most brilliant things I’d ever seen. It’s a very special piece of art, and I did not immediately think about adapting it at all. I just was like, goddamn, that was so good.”
One of the biggest differences between A Man on the Inside and The Mole Agent is that “I just wanted to make a bigger deal out of the case,” Schur told Entertainment Weekly. “I wanted the P.I. to be more involved. I wanted there to be more clues and more cliffhangers and more of a sense that this is a real crime that’s being committed and a real thing that demands investigation. And I wanted to show Charles going from a person who was kind of bad at it and was playing dress up with the Sherlock Holmes cap, to all the way to being a person who was potentially capable of actually putting the puzzle pieces together and solving a case.”
He also called it “very different from everything else I’ve done.”
Cast
Now this is a good cast. A Man on the Inside stars Ted Danson (you know who Ted Danson is), Mary Elizabeth Ellis (The Waitress from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Stephanie Beatriz (Rosa from Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Stephen McKinley Henderson (too many awesome credits), Sally Struthers (Gloria from All in the Family), as well as Eugene Cordero, Lilah Richcreek Estrada, Margaret Avery, John Getz, Susan Ruttan, Lori Tan Chinn, Clyde Kusatsu, Jama Williamson, Wyatt Yang, Deuce Basco, Lincoln Lambert, and Kerry O’Malley. Also, because this is a Michael Schur show, Marc Evan Jackson.
Release Date
A Man on the Inside debuts on Netflix in November (no exact date has been given yet).
Trailer
Netflix hasn’t released a A Man on the Inside trailer yet. Fortunately, there’s always the scene from The Good Place with Chidi’s hit song “You Put the Peeps in the Chili.” (I miss that guy… and that show… and most of all, Jason.)