A Man on the Inside, Netflix's newest comedy series, reunites actor Ted Danson with creator Mike Schur, who has previously worked on Schur's sitcom The Good Place.
Schur is back with another comedy series that follows the story of a retired widower, Charles, who becomes an undercover agent at the Pacific View Retirement Residence.
In an interview with Netflix's Tudum, Schur discussed that A Man on the Inside is loosely based on the 2020 documentary The Mole Agent and a real-life incident following a nursing home in El Monte, Chile.
He revealed how he chanced upon the documentary, and the movie's theme resonated with him. His producing partner Morgan Sackett advised him to create a series around it with Danson playing the main character.
Schur also revealed that he wanted to portray the theme of again, which is not explored often in mainstream cinema.
More about A Man on the Inside inspiration in our story.
Schur took inspiration from a 2020 documentary for A Man on the Inside
The powerful 2020 documentary The Mole Agent was Chile's submission for the Best International Feature Film at the 2021 Academy Awards, followed by a nomination for Best Documentary Feature.
The movie is based on a real-life 83-year-old widower named Sergio Chamy, who inspired Danson's character. Chamy is hired by a private investigator, Romulo, to investigate the staff's potential mistreatment in a Chilean nursing home.
“The hero, Sergio, is so wonderfully wrought, so real, just a lovely human being.''
While Sergio does not find any traces of mistreatment, he does find very quirky characters inside the house, with one of the members wanting to marry him.
The documentary concludes with Sergio reporting that patients are being treated well at the facility and returning to his family in Santiago.
The movie takes a closer look at retirement facilities and how lonely the people living in them are. It is a very real depiction of how people are shunned from society after a certain age.
''It’s a beautiful meditation on aging, a subject we are uniquely terrible in this country at confronting, dealing with, or discussing. It showed the reality of aging for people along a very broad spectrum — some folks who were doing great and some folks who were not — and that really grabbed me.” Schur on The Mole Agent
He also revealed that he has tried to capture the essence of the documentary in the series and confront the themes of aging, memory loss, and illness.
What is A Man on the Inside about?
While the real-life incident involves a son hiring a PI to investigate his mother's potential mistreatment at the facility, the series does not dramatize the events to this extent.
Keeping with the comedic streak, Charles is hired by a PI to investigate the missing necklace of one of the residents, as reported by his son.
This opportunity could not have been presented at a better time, as Charles is feeling lonely after retirement. He finds a second chance in this job opportunity, and he goes as an undercover agent.
He meets new people and forges new friendships on the way, which is the underlying theme of the show Schur wanted to encapsulate.
“We just tried to stay true to the documentary because I really feel like the documentary kind of nailed it in terms of what matters. What is worth talking about with folks at the age that Sergio was in the documentary,”
Catch all the episodes of A Man on the Inside on Netflix.
Trending
For the latest scoops on your favorite TV shows and movies, follow SoapCentral.
Reply
