Ted Danson Is Teaming Up With His Best Partner For A New Show
Ted Danson is teaming up with Mike Schur for a new series called The Mole Agent.
Over the years, Ted Danson has established himself as an actor for the ages. Back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, he helped transform Cheers into the original must-see TV, and more recently, he was the best part of The Good Place (an impressive feat given how perfectly cast that show was). And now it looks like we’re going to get even more Danson content, as Deadline reports that he is teaming up with The Good Place creator Mike Schur to create The Mole Agent, a new serialized television comedy that platforms such as Apple TV+, Netflix, HBO Max, and Prime Video are now in a bidding war over.
While it’s designed as a comedy, the premise for this new Ted Danson show sounds a bit more serious than we were expecting. In The Mole Agent, Danson plays someone hired by a private investigator to go undercover at a nursing home, which sounds like it could get very bleak. Then again, nobody would have thought a show about characters being trapped in hell would make for funny television, but Ted Danson and Mike Schur made that happen in a hilarious way.
Interestingly, this latest Ted Danson project is based on a documentary of the same name filmed in Chile back in 2020. The documentary directed by Maite Alberdi has the same premise (a private investigator hires an older man to infiltrate a nursing home), but with a more heart-tugging twist: the PI’s mother lives in the nursing home, and he’s doing all this because he’s worried about how she is getting treated. That documentary got shortlisted for Best International Feature Film, and it looks like Danson and Schur are hoping to capture some of that magic as they adapt this idea into televised form.
And while we’d watch Ted Danson read a phone book, his involvement isn’t the only reason to be excited about The Mole Agent. The show will be run by Mike Schur who, in addition to bringing The Good Place to life, was also the co-creator and executive producer for hit comedies like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and, before that, Parks & Recreation. In other words, he has a stellar history of creating awesome comedy television, and we can’t help but be excited about what he has in store for us.
Of course, even if we only knew Ted Danson and Mike Schur for The Good Place, their involvement in a new show would inevitably generate major buzz. The series as a whole was twice nominated for the Best Comedy Series Emmy, and Danson himself earned three different Emmy nominations for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He and Schur are comedy powerhouses, and The Mole Agent has the potential to be their biggest hit yet.
Before we can watch Ted Danson and Mike Schur make magic once again, though, one of the many platforms bidding for this show will have to emerge as the winner. And it makes sense that all of these are streaming platforms, as the serialized nature of The Good Place makes it perfect for binging (hence, the amazing success that series has had while streaming on Netflix). Here’s hoping that Schur finds the right platform and talent soon enough that those of us hyped for the show don’t end up in a nursing home of our own (though if we get to hang out with Ted Danson while we’re there, it wouldn’t be so bad).
