Michael Schur wrote for the The Office, and created The Good Place, and co-created Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. His new show for Netflix, A Man on the Inside, features Ted Danson as a widowed retiree who goes undercover in a retirement community. He spoke with Terry Gross about the series, making fun of NPR (lovingly) on Parks, and being a life-long rule-follower. Also, our TV critic David Bianculli reviews the new series and says it's the sweetest show since Ted Lasso. Subscribe to Fresh Air's weekly newsletter for staff recommendations, gems from the archive, and a peek at what's coming next week.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Michael Schur is one of the people behind some of the most beloved TV comedy series of the recent past. He wrote for The Office, co-created and wrote for Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, They both star Ted Danson, who became a star playing the bartender on Cheers, and both shows are entertaining and surprisingly philosophical.
Here's David's review.
In The Good Place, series creator Michael Schur put an awful lot of trust in Ted Danson, not only in his audience appeal, but also in his acting ability. That series was about a woman, played by Kristen Bell, who awakens in the afterlife with Ted Danson as her guide. Its brilliant twist, revealed after a full season, was that Danson's character wasn't who he pretended to be.
It required the actor to switch gears significantly in midstream, and Danson was great at it. And in A Man on the Inside, the new Netflix TV show re-teaming Shure as series creator with Danson as star, the story starts with him pretending once again. Improbably but charmingly, this new eight-episode comedy series is based on a documentary from Chile.
Called The Mole Agent, and also available now on Netflix, it was nominated for an Oscar in 2021 and shown on the PBS series POV that same year. It told the true story of an elderly man hired by a detective agency to go undercover in a nursing home. The client's mother, a resident of the home, complained of the theft of a family heirloom.
So the detective agency advertised for an elderly man, hoping to place him in the home temporarily to find the culprit. Inspired by this story, Michael Schur starts his version by introducing us to Ted Danson's character of Charles in a home movie flashback from his wedding day many decades ago. Then it cuts to Charles in the present day in Oakland, California.
He's a widower, a retired professor, and even though his daughter and her husband and kids live nearby, has a rigid and solitary daily routine. That routine is interrupted one day by a suggestion from that daughter, Emily, played by Mary Elizabeth Ellis.
Look, I know that you don't like to talk about mom, so we don't have to, but you know that she would have wanted you to be a person, live your life. Okay, do you remember when I was little and you would give me Charles challenges? Like, find 10 out-of-state license plates or read 20 books before Christmas? I'm giving you a Charles challenge.
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