The fascinating true story that inspired Netflix series A Man on the Inside
Viewers are loving Netflix's new hit comedy A Man on the Inside, which sees The Good Place star Ted Danson play Charles, a widower who takes on an assignment from a private investigator to join a retirement home to discover who is stealing heirlooms from the residents.
But did you know that the stranger-than-fiction tale is actually based on a true story? Check out the trailer here...
The show was inspired by an Oscar-nominated documentary, The Mole Agent, that was released back in 2020. Directed by Maite Alberdi, the story follows an elderly man named Sergio Chamy, who is delighted to discover an ad in his local newspaper looking for people aged 80-90 for a job.
The show differs a little from Sergio's experience, who is hired to go undercover as a resident at a Chilean nursing home after a private investigator, Rómulo Aitken, is hired by the concerned son of a resident, Sonia. who is worried that his mother is being mistreated in the home.
As such, the care home residents are informed of a camera set up - but don't know that they are there to follow Sergio as he takes on the task. Like Charles, he sends voice notes of his daily findings to the private investigator.
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Although in real life, Sergio does join the home to look at potential poor treatment, he discovers that one of the residents, Marta, steals other residents' belongings as a result of her dementia. He ultimately concludes that Sonia is being well looked after, apart from one occasion where the workers missed giving her medication by mistake.
Also like Charles, Sergio becomes pals with many of the residents in the care home, and the documentary looks like loneliness that elderly people in care have to face. Sergio celebrated his 90th birthday in 2023.
Speaking about adapting Sergio's story, the show's creator Mike Schur told Tudum: "I knew almost nothing about [The Mole Agent], and I just fell for it so hard. The hero, Sergio, is so wonderfully wrought, so real, just a lovely human being.
"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. "
He continued: "It became so clear that there was a way to take that story, swapping in Ted’s unique charisma for Sergio’s unique charisma. As soon as we had that idea, things happened very quickly. I started working on my idea for the adaptation, we pitched it to Ted, and he was in."
