Ted Danson goes gumshoe in first look at Michael Schur's A Man On The Inside

Mike Schur is back, and he’s bringing the whole squad with him. The creator of The Office, Parks And Recreation, Brooklyn 99, The Good Place, and more has a new series coming to Netflix, and it includes some familiar faces. 

Ted Danson—of Cheers and The Good Place fame—stars in A Man On The Inside, an eight-episode series based on the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Mole Agent. Per its official logline, the show follows “a widower (Danson), eager to shake up his routine, [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.” The original 2020 documentary followed an 83-year-old widower in Chile who finds himself in the same goofy scenario.

The show also features a stacked cast of Schur regulars, listed below (via Tudum):

• •Mary Elizabeth Ellis (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Licorice Pizza, Red One) as Emily, a married mother of three boys who has to adjust when her father, Charles (Danson), makes a surprising late-life career move and becomes an undercover detective.
• •Stephanie Beatriz (Twisted Metal, Encanto, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) as Didi, the all-seeing, all-knowing managing director of the Pacific View Retirement Residence in San Francisco.
• •Lilah Richcreek Estrada (Chicago Med, Four Dads) as Julie, a San Francisco-based private investigator. Julie hires Charles to be her mole and pretends to be his daughter to maintain the ruse at the retirement home.
• •Two-time Tony nominee Stephen McKinley Henderson (Fences, Dune) as Calbert, a transplant from Washington, D.C., who’s the stoic eyes and ears of the Pacific View community.
• •Two-time Emmy Award winner Sally Struthers (All in the Family, Gilmore Girls, Still Standing) as Virginia, the vivacious life of the party who immediately takes a shine to Charles.
• •Eugene Cordero (Loki, Easter Sunday, The Good Place) as Joel, Emily’s husband, a supportive and exceedingly competent 10th-grade science teacher.
• •Academy Award nominee Margaret Avery (The Color Purple, Being Mary Jane) as Florence, Virginia’s sweet best friend. Florence loves poetry and the Golden State Warriors in equal measure.
• •John Getz (Transparent, Grace and Frankie, The Social Network) as Elliott, Pacific View’s resident lothario. Elliott immediately feels threatened by all the attention Charles gets when he moves in.
• •Four-time Emmy nominee Susan Ruttan (L.A. Law, Sprung, Mom) as Gladys, a glamorous former costume designer from New York who lives next door to Charles at Pacific View.
• •Lori Tan Chinn (Joy Ride, Kung Fu Panda 4, Jentry Chau vs. The Underworld) as Susan, the president of the Pacific View resident council, which she rules with an iron fist.
• •Clyde Kusatsu (Young Rock, Never Have I Ever) as Grant, a Princeton grad at Pacific View who’s deeply concerned with you knowing he’s a Princeton grad.
• •Marc Evan Jackson (Lessons in Chemistry, The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Dead to Me) as Evan, the client who hires Julie to investigate the theft of his mother’s necklace.
• •Jama Williamson (The Good Place, Parks and Recreation) as Beatrice, the Pacific View activities director who’s never had a bad day in her life.

It’s definitely exciting to have a Schur series back on our screens. (The last was Rutherford Falls, which he co-created with Ed Helms and Sierra Teller Ornelas in 2021.) However, the curse of this going straight to Netflix instead of the creator’s old home on NBC is that the days of 25-episode Office seasons or Parks And Recreation taking two whole seasons to really find their footing are long gone. Historically, Schur shows have needed a lot more than eight episodes to really build cast chemistry and grow into whatever they’re meant to become. Hopefully, A Man On The Inside has already sorted that out.

A Man On The Inside premieres on Netflix in November 2024. You can check out some first-look images from the show, courtesy of Netflix, below: