Review: ‘A Man on the Inside,’ starring Ted Danson, is sweet, serious but always funny

My first memory of Ted Danson is of him dancing solo to Frank Sinatra in a pool of light on a pier in the movie “Body Heat,” which is all I remember of “Body Heat.” It set a tone of gracefulness that continues to inform his performances to this day, in a wide range of soft-spoken modes, from “Cheers” to “Bored to Death” to “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” to “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” where he appears as a version of himself. He mostly plays comedy, because that’s what a likable actor is liable to be asked to do, but he can work against type with the best of them, as he did as a corrupt billionaire in “Damages.” That Danson, assumed to be an angel, turned out to be a devil in the first season finale of “The Good Place,” was a massive fake-out that depended on subverting our expectations, not only of his character but also of the actor himself. It’s in the newspaper that he comes across a classified ad, reading: “Wanted, Investigative Assistant, Male 75-85, Must have phone.” This brings him to the office of Julie, a private investigator whose client has hired her to look into the theft of his mother’s ruby necklace from her room in a posh San Francisco retirement home. At the Pacific View retirement community, Julie poses as Charles’ daughter, and when Emily arrives unexpectedly, he introduces her to the director, Didi, as “my niece … Julie,” adding an extra layer to the farce. Emily is skeptical of the whole arrangement — “You know, reading a bunch of Sue Grafton novels doesn’t make you a detective,” she tells her father — but it will also, as it bumps along, bring them closer together.