The unquiet American

Charles talks too much. The fustily dressed 80-year-old prattles on about architectural details—he used to be a professor—and adds footnotes to persuade listeners that what he's saying is genuinely exciting: talking about a cathedral "designed to look like a conquistador's hat," he throws in a "pretty wild." Not that it works, with most people tuning out when this man—who cuts out newspaper articles and posts them to his daughter—starts going on and on. Someone who has just met Charles describes his personality far too accurately: "He's like if a podcast wore a suit."

- RAJA SEN

That does sound cumbersome, but since Charles is played by comedy icon Ted Danson, it is, as ever, hard to look away. On Netflix's latest smash A Man on the Inside, Danson plays a widower who goes from being a shut-in to being a secret agent—a private investigator hires him to infiltrate an old-age home where things are being stolen. An adaptation of the wondrous Chilean documentary The Mole Agent (2020), this is a soothing and empathetic series about growing old and learning to live with it...for both the elderly and those around them.

The series is created by Michael Schur—creator of Parks & Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Netflix), the American version of The Office (Netflix), and, most recently, The Good Place (Netflix), in which Danson played an almighty being fascinated by the contradictions of human life and morality. Schur is a miraculous optimist, and his sitcom universe is a defiant celebration of goodness, a stubborn embrace of decency that shines like a perpetual dawn in television's often shadowy terrain.

Even his wittiest, most sardonic characters—Ron Swanson grumbling about meat, or Eleanor Shellstrop snarking through the afterlife—are anchored by empathy. Schur creates a world of inevitable redemption, as unyieldingly good-natured as Leslie Knope's belief in waffles. This isn't to say that he makes boring, saccharine, unchallenging work. A Schur show is smart, sly, and sharply self-aware, but always beats with a warm, human heart: it's television sunshine. (Admirers of Schur's work would do well to seek out his brilliant, insightful book How to be Perfect.)