NETFLIX – ON DEMAND – SERIES
Somewhere in the middle of the season, when a character has just died, an undercover spy played by Ted Danson reads, as a tribute, the famous verses of As you like : “The whole world is a stage. » The passage ends with a delicate formula which compares the last age of life to a “second childhood”. In Old-fashioned spyMichael Schur takes Shakespeare at his word, and makes a San Francisco retirement home the place of the last pleasures, friendships, emotions, the last bickering and the last madness too.
Read the interview with Michael Schur (in 2022): Article reserved for our subscribers “Major series can be seen through the prism of philosophy”
Read later
Touched by age − or perhaps just by the fact of working with Netflix −, the ex-screenwriter of Parks and Recreation and of Brooklyn Nine-Nine adapts with great caution a true story from Chile and immortalized in a successful documentary, The Mole Agent. Transposed to California, this absurd story of a retired teacher infiltrated in a luxury nursing home to elucidate a jewelry theft actually seems tailor-made for the small screen and for the charisma of Ted Danson, an actor close to Michael Schur since The Good Place.
Without him, it is possible that we would have stayed away from this sweetly cushy series, rather designed for the “third age” box of Netflix subscribers. That would have been a shame, because she shows her best cards in the middle of the season, when, after installing the distinguished Charles Nieuwendyk at the Pacific View retirement home, she turns away from the investigation surrounding the stolen necklace to focus on about its real subject, which is that of old age. The question is not trivial for Charles, who has just lost his wife to Alzheimer’s disease.
Infinite elegance
Old-fashioned spy although delivering a terribly watered down vision of the retirement home, the residents who came to end their lives there are tormented by the same questions and the same desires as the others. What to do with these last moments? What remains to be accomplished to leave without too many regrets?
During his time at Pacific View, Charles will find answers in each of the residents of the establishment, which will allow him both to solve the enigma that is why he is there but above all to approach the problem with a little more serenity. time that remains for him to live, certainly deprived of his wife but closer to his daughter, Emily, whom he has made his accomplice.
You have 14.6% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
