How many actors have managed to sustain a career playing lead roles, or very prominent supporting roles, over more than four decades of TV stardom?
Not many. But Ted Danson has pulled it off.
Now, at 76, he’s starring in Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside‚" an enjoyable eight-episode limited series that was created by Michael Schur (”Parks and Recreation,” “The Office,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “The Good Place”). Danson plays Charles, a retired professor of engineering who, when we meet him, is very much still in mourning for his late wife a year after she died.
After responding to a personal ad placed by the head of a private investigation firm, Charles agrees to go undercover at a retirement home in San Francisco and find a missing ruby necklace that was possibly stolen and is definitely valuable.
Danson has had hits, such as “Cheers” (perhaps you’ve heard of it?). And he’s had flops (“Mr. Mayor” was canceled after just two seasons). But he has seldom been away from our TV screens for long.
Why? Well, it almost certainly has to do with the likability that Danson projects. He appears to be a generous scene partner who doesn’t need to own every onscreen moment, someone who clears space for performers around him. He’s had to adjust to and mesh with a lot of different ensembles over the years, each with their own rhythms.
Then there’s the fact that although he’s a tall and good-looking guy — and was a sex symbol during the “Cheers” years — he’s proven willing to play the doofus. Danson doesn’t have to be the all-conquering hero; his characters have vulnerabilities and generally aren’t afraid to admit it.
That was the case with the character who made Danson’s name: Sam Malone, a former Red Sox relief pitcher turned bar owner in the Boston-set “Cheers” (1982-93). Yes, Sam had an undeniable swagger, and he was an unrepentant Lothario. But he was also honest with himself and others about the slippery slope he was trying to navigate as a recovering alcoholic operating a bar. That inner tension yielded one of the most indelible portrayals in TV history.
A few months after “Cheers’' wrapped up its run in 1993, Danson was embroiled in controversy. At the time, he and Whoopi Goldberg were in a romantic relationship. Danson stunned spectators and caused a public outcry when he performed at a Friar’s Club roast of Goldberg while in blackface and repeatedly used a racial slur.
Goldberg strongly defended him and said she had written most of Danson’s comedy routine. According to The New York Times, the duo said that they had “received hate mail about their relationship and that it had been a factor in their decision to do a comic routine that would bring racial stereotypes into the open.” Goldberg said “she herself had written much of the material for Danson and even found him the makeup artist who applied the blackface,” according to the Associated Press. In a statement, Danson said: “There was too much love behind my words to ever be misconstrued as racist.”
A few years later, he returned to the world of sitcoms, playing Dr. John Becker, a misanthropic physician, in “Becker” (1998-2004). But “Becker” was a mediocre sitcom that wasn’t as edgy as it seemed to think it was, and it illustrated that misanthropy is not Danson’s strongest suit.
From 2016 to 2020, he played Michael, a guide to the afterlife, in Schur’s wildly inventive “The Good Place.” In executing a colossal plot twist at the end of season one, Danson wore a fiendish expression that is seared in my memory.
Along the way, he has been in the cast of such series as “Damages,” “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” “CSI: Cyber,” and season two of “Fargo.” In “Bored to Death” (2009-11), a small gem on HBO, Danson played a louche, pot-smoking magazine editor. On Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” also on HBO, Danson made regular appearances as himself, or a version of himself, along with his wife, Mary Steenburgen.
What’s next? It’s not a question you would ask about every septuagenarian, but with Ted Danson, there’s always a next.
Don Aucoin can be reached at donald.aucoin@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeAucoin.