Hearing the premise of A Man on the Inside, the new Netflix sitcom starring Ted Danson, it's easy to assume the whole thing was cooked up by sitcom writers. But as it turns out, the series created by The Good Place and Parks and Recreation showrunner Michael Schur actually has roots in the real world. Not only that, but the whole event was made into a documentary back in 2020.
The sitcom follows a recently widowed retiree named Charles (Danson), who is hired by a private investigator named Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada) to pose as a new resident of an elder care facility in order to covertly look into a client's concern that a prized piece of family jewelry was stolen. Being an outgoing and approachable type, Charles doesn't make for the most covert spy, but he quickly befriends many of the residents and learns that what they're really missing is human connection.
The whole "undercover nursing home spy" angle sounds pretty wacky, but the series is actually loosely based on the 2020 Chilean documentary The Mole Agent, directed by Maite Alberdi, in which an elderly man goes undercover to investigate allegations of mistreatment in an old folks home. The film received widespread acclaim, and was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2021. While A Man On the Inside mostly just borrows the documentary's original conceit, it proves to be the kind of premise that's so crazy it has to be true.
A Man on the Inside
Comedy
Crime
Release Date
November 21, 2024
Cast
Ted Danson , Mary Elizabeth Ellis , Lilah Richcreek Estrada , Stephanie Beatriz , Sally Struthers , John Getz , Miles Fowler , Clyde Kusatsu , Stephen McKinley Henderson , Lori Tan Chinn , Kerry O'Malley , Wyatt Yang , Susan Ruttan , Veronica Cartwright , Catherine Leong , Eugene Cordero
Seasons
1
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The Mole Agent
The Mole Agent concerns an octogenarian named Sergio, who is hired by a private investigator named Rómulo to move into a nursing home in El Monte, Chile, outside the country's capitol city, Santiago. His mission: to look into his client's allegations that her mother, Sonia, is being abused by the staff. Sergio tries to keep a low profile and observe the goings-on, but the presence of a new person in the facility proves too exciting for some of the residents, and he quickly becomes a beloved and trusted member of the community. He also can't help but draw the eye of more than one woman in the home, who fall head over heels for the well-dressed gentleman.
While Sergio takes his investigation seriously, in the end he isn't able to turn up any evidence of abuse or neglect. What he finds instead is a group of people who struggle with loneliness and isolation, left to spend their final years in a facility that tries its best to care for them, but can't do much about family members that don't visit or a lack of contact with the outside world. It's a warm-hearted, frequently funny, poignant documentary that shines a necessary light on the plight of aging people, not just in Chile, but around the globe.
A Man on the Inside is far from a direct adaptation of the documentary, but rather takes its basic conceit and uses it to tell its own story, one that covers similar thematic and emotional ground but with a more broad, comic tone.
The Plight of the Aging
While it turns out that neither Sonia nor any of the other residents in The Mole Agent are facing mistreatment, the family's concerns certainly aren't unfounded. Elder abuse is a serious problem around the world, with older people frequently targeted for manipulation, theft, and even assault. While elder protection laws in the US have improved in recent decades, it was only after years of horrific reports of abuse at nursing homes and memory care facilities around the country, and it's certainly far from completely solved.Related
Beyond the criminal abuses, the elderly face discrimination in plenty of more subtle ways, from ageism that assumes them to be less capable, to a more benign form of societal neglect. In many western countries, including the US, the elderly are frequently seen as a problem to be solved, moved out of their homes and into facilities that are chronically under-funded, particularly for those who can't afford daily in-home care or housing in a premium facility.
While abuses do sometimes happen, most nursing home staff try their best to work with what they have and give people an acceptable quality of life, but often deal with staffing issues and budget cuts that prevent them from providing ideal care. And with more people living longer than ever, it's an issue that can be expected to get bigger in the coming years.
A Man on the Inside is clearly meant to be a comedy, but it explores some harsh truths around aging in America and the importance of human connection. As the COVID-19 pandemic proved, loneliness and isolation can be just as dangerous as disease, particularly for vulnerable populations like the elderly. Hopefully A Man on the Inside, like The Mole Agent before it, can make audiences think a little more about their elders, and maybe take a more active role in the lives of their aging loved ones.
