Pop Culture Happy Hour - A Man On The Inside

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

The charming Netflix sitcom A Man on the Inside stars Ted Danson as a lonely widower who’s hired by a private investigator to live undercover in a senior living facility. His mission is to find out who stole a precious item from one of the residents. Created by Michael Schur (The Good Place), the series is also a tender and poignant depiction of loss, aging, and finding community. A Man on the Inside just returned for a second season, so today we’re revisiting our conversation about the show. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The charming sitcom, A Man on the Inside, stars Ted Denson as a lonely widower who's hired by a private investigator to live undercover in a senior living facility. The mission? Find out who stole a precious item from one of the residents. It's an out-there premise, but it's also a tender and poignant depiction of loss, aging, and finding community. In other words, it's exactly what we've come to expect from creator Michael Shore, who, among other wonderful things, previously brought us to the good place. The series just came back for a second season, so we thought it was a perfect time to revisit our conversation about the show. I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about the Netflix series, A Man on the Inside, on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. It's just the two of us today.

In A Man on the Inside, Ted Danson plays Charles, a retired engineering professor and recent widower. His daughter, Emily, is played by Mary Elizabeth Ellis, and she encourages him to take up a new hobby to stave off his loneliness. Inspired, Charles answers a one ad posted by a private investigator. Apparently, a resident at a nearby senior living facility has had her necklace stolen, and Charles is hired to embed as a mole and track down the culprit. I gave my spy persona a trademark. Spy Charles, where's the pocket square? That's how you'll know that I'm in spy mode.

Regular Charles? Spy Charles, regular? Spy Charles. As he morphs into this amateur detective, he befriends and sometimes clashes with the quirky staff and residence at Pacific View Retirement Home, and he also confronts his own grief. If the setup here sounds vaguely familiar, that's because it is. The show's creator Michael Shore was actually inspired by the really, really good Oscar-nominated documentary, The Mull Agent.

A man on The Inside is streaming on Netflix now, and Stephen, look, I have still yet to watch a movie with you, but I do know this is fact about you, that you tend to be a blubbering mess. Just in general. Just in general. Not even when I'm watching things. Just in general. But like, you know, when a movie or a show hits you right in the sweet spot,

and this show feels like that kind of experience, did it hit you in all the feels? How do we feel about this show? Oh, my God. Ayesha, first of all, you've known me for a long time. You're asking me a question to which you already know the answer. I know, I know. I cried watching the trailer for this show. It's not necessarily like tugging that hard all the time.

No. I teared up watching it because it was like, oh, I need this. I need a new mind. Michael Shore Show. I need Ted Danson. I need lots and lots of little good place Easter eggs. I need all these character actors who pop up on this show whom I love so dearly on a very long ago episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour when we talked about kind of pop culture figures we wanted to defend who we felt had gotten a bad rap. I talked about Sally Struthers. And how much I love Sally Struthers and how much Sally Struthers does not get the credit that she deserves.

You are tall. Thank you. Is that your real hair? Stephen McKinley Henderson? Man, you and I have talked about our fandom for Stephen McKinley Henderson before. He's one of those character actors who every time he pops up, I'm happy to see him. There are certain character actors who have this effect of like, oh, it's my old friend. And I have that experience watching him.

This show delves into kind of his friend. with the Ted Danson character, I found it enormously moving. I worked at the Pentagon. Get out of here. I like to say that before I tell people what my actual job was. I was in food service. I managed the cafeteria. That's neat.

Did you have a cool badge? I had a cool badge. It's not necessarily that it's fall-down funny. It is funny, but mostly is it's just a good hang. Yeah. Man, Thanksgiving. If you're hanging with your family for Thanksgiving, put this show on. This show will make you feel better, even though there are elements of it that are poignant and sad. Yes, this is filling the void that I felt when Grace and Frankie ended. Look, I love me a show that is focused on the challenges of aging, but also doing so in a fun, lighthearted way. And the same way that that show, that was, of course, another Netflix series that starred Jane Fon. Rhonda and Lily Tomlin as friends who are kind of navigating seniorhood. And this one, it gets at that.

It really, what I like about the way this show is, is that Mike Shore has talked about this. But like, it's not quite a workplace comedy. It's also not in the way that the good place is sort of like this look at the afterlife. Like this is like that in between. This is a community. This is an environment where you see all levels of interactions and dynamics. You've got the staff. You've got Stephanie Beatrice.

So, everybody happy? No. Well, you're never happy, but are you at least back to your baseline level of unhappiness? Using her real voice and not the one she used on Brooklyn Nine-nine. I know, which I didn't realize wasn't her real voice. It's so interesting to see her playing a very different character from Rosa on Brooklyn Nine-N-9. And here she is playing Didi, who is the director of the retirement home. It really gets at what I imagine is the,

daily stressors of working in that kind of environment. Like, she has moments where she's, she's calm, she's trying to navigate various residents who might have some differing opinions, who might be clashing. And then she just, like, finds time to go and slip into her office and lay on the ground and, like, put on headphones and just, like, zone out. And that's her time. And I love those little moments and how it really treats this fact of life that many of us will have to go through, whether directly or through caring for,

family members in our lives. It really treats it as something that is important and messy and hard to deal with, but also really funny. I love the sort of interaction between John Gets, who plays Elliot and Charles, the Ted dancing character, because they start to have like a little bit of beef. At least Elliot has a beef with Charles. And at one point, he calls him his sexual rival because him and the Sally Struthers character had a thing. And now Charles might be. be interrupting that thing. You tried to steal my woman and you couldn't. So you stole my watch.

I'm not yours to steal. And nothing happened. Something happened all right. My watch was stolen by my sexual rival. There's just so much fun here. It's just delightful. Yeah. And it's just the hallmarks of a Michael Shore comedy are like deep empathy, including for

secondary characters and also a willingness to provide a redemption arc for people that you don't expect to get redemption arcs. And he is a maker of TV who really believes in humanity and really wants to believe in humanity. And so if that's what you're looking for right now, this is just right there for you. And it's so digestible. This entire thing is four hours long doled out in half hour increments. It's not necessarily like hitting you with cliffhangers that are making you mash that next episode button, but it's full of like, no, I want to hang out with these people for another half hour. Now, I can do another half hour hanging out with these people. I blew through this show very quickly. I did not dole it out to myself. Yes, I watched it in one day,

two sittings, four episodes each, but it is really that easy. And another thing that I sort of latched onto with this show is the fact that the Ted dancing character, Charles, there's a way, you know, I mentioned the sexual rival, as they referred to it in like a possible love triangle, but that's not what the show is really interested in. You know, Charles is a character who, the show establishes from the beginning. He was like the less outgoing of the couple of his late wife. His late wife was the one who was very just like into the world, love to do things. And the show starts out with him being, feeling like, you know, he doesn't know what to do with himself. And I think the show really gets at this idea of loneliness in old age and how to reckon with that.

And I love the way, like you said, there's this human quality to it that it's not saccharin. Like, it treats it in a real way. But it really does tug at the heartstrings. I love the relationship between Charles and Emily, his daughter. She is trying to get him to open up. And they have a really just like honest conversation. This entire situation forces them to have honest conversations about his late wife and the fact that this show also is very much dealing with the idea of dementia and not being yourself and losing yourself to that kind of illness. I think a lot of people who have dealt with that will really connect to the way this show highlights such a common part of life.

It reminded me a lot of my grandfather, who in his last years, had just become a shell of himself. And that was the part that, you know, anytime that was sort of mentioned and becomes sort of an integral to the storytelling, that is when I was feeling, oh, man, this is a lot. This is a lot. But every time that happens, Mike Shore and his writers find a way to sort of pull it back and make light of it. But in a good way. In a good way. I mean, you're in such good hands here. Yeah. I kept finding common threads between this show and the good place.

One of the messages of that show is that it is never too late to be better. Yeah. It is never too late to improve. It is never too late to grow. And that message is really central to this show, right? Like, you know, he is of an age. He is retired. He can plausibly fit in at a retirement community.

but he still has stuff he needs to work on. And the people who are in this retirement facility still have stuff they need to work on. And they are working on it. And I think that is such a valuable reminder that, like, it's never too late to do the work. It's never too late to mend fences and repair yourself and repair your relationships

and reach out to other people and push back against the parts of you that shrink your own world. And so I found this show really inspiring on top of it being a good hang. Yeah, we haven't even mentioned Margaret Avery, the wonderful Margaret Avery, who is probably best known for playing the role of Shug Avery in the color purple, the 1985 version. But she plays Florence and her and the Sally Struthers character, Virginia, are like besties inside the retirement home. And their friendship is just so sweet. And to your point, Stephen, about sort of like never, like it not being too late for you to change.

There's a great moment where Florence makes this extravagant purchase for herself that she never would have done before in her life. And she's just like, huh, maybe I do like this. Like she had to like allow herself to be happy in a way. And I don't know. I'm like almost tearing up thinking about it. But I'm just like, oh, man, like I hope, you know, when I'm in my old age and like when my parents are in their old age and if they ever had to be in that sort of environment. that like this feels like an idealist, like an idyllic version. This is the most hopeful.

This is the most hopeful outcome. This is actually the good place. Like, I realize that a lot of facilities are not like this. But you know what? Sometimes you just need a little bit of a fantasy or like you need art to create things that we hope to be. And I just think the way that this show really imagines like the best possible scenario for all of these people, living together and clashing, yes, but also finding common ground. It's just like, I don't know, there's just something really lovely about it. And we've talked a lot about, obviously, the idea of

aging here, but it's also just a fun sort of spy-ish comedy. Like, there is also a mystery. And it's a mystery that they do solve. But it is also a show that in eight half-hour episodes does character building for, like, a dozen different characters and gives you a real sense of who these characters are and why they are the way they are. In the very first episode of this show, as we meet Charles, we're getting so many subtle pieces of character building, the stuff about, like, how he had, like, taken his wife's stuff and sealed them in rubber-made containers. Every one of them clearly marked. Like, gives you such a sense of who he is and how he's. compartmentalizes his life. You see him like making his morning coffee and how fastidiously he's

kind of sorting everything in order to put his life in the exact order he wants it. And you just very quickly get a sense, I know who this is. Over the course of the show, you're getting filled in with a little bit more details about him. It is a really subtly sophisticated piece of storytelling on top of being just great, great fun. Also, just the little moment. Also, just the little moments like the regular community meetings where before they even start, they have to unwrap all their candies. Just the little details that cook fun at what it might mean to grow old. All the food is too salty.

None of the food is salty enough. I don't know. I don't know what else to say. It's just so delightful that is our ringing endorsements. And once you've had a chance to check it out, which you absolutely should, let us know what you think about a man on the inside. Find us at Facebook.com slash PCHH. And that brings us to the end of our show. Stephen Thompson, thanks so much for being here.

I am so glad I got to talk about this show with you. Oh, me too, buddy. Thank you. And this episode was produced by Liz Metzker and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. And Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all tomorrow.

Oh man, I really did almost start out. Me too.