This is a cosy, lighthearted whodunnit about a retired professor who gets a second wind as a private eye. It\u2019s also a bingo card for just about everything that makes streamer-era TV so patronising, uninspiring and mind-numbingly dull.<\/p>\n
On the surface, A Man on the Inside\u2019s crimes might seem negligible: it\u2019s a little schmaltzy, a little too pleased with itself in that wisecrack-stuffed American comedy way. Yet it\u2019s exactly that inoffensiveness that makes this strain of television so insidious. When the New York Times critic James Poniewozik coined the term \u201cmid TV\u201d to describe the current \u201cprofusion of well-cast, sleekly produced competence\u201d that has come to dominate our screens, it wasn\u2019t so much a vicious takedown as a shrug at the blah-ness of it all. The tech giants have pummelled us into submission by siphoning off our time via OK entertainment.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, it\u2019s a lot to lay at the door of an amiable mystery about elderly people. And this series is no worse than the majority of content pumped on to platforms nowadays. But it does unite an unusual number of modern TV\u2019s most cynical methods. For a start, it trades blatantly on the past glories of its personnel. In this case, the headline creator-actor combo of showrunner Michael Schur, whose CV includes Parks and Recreation and The Good Place<\/a>, and the venerable Ted Danson, who happened to star in the latter.<\/p>\n