If you're looking for a new series to distract you from the current state of the world, Vicious Mannies is just the show.
Rex Lee (Entourage) and Aaron Hartzler (author of Rapture Practice and What We Saw) star as mannies who are gay and, well, extremely vicious. They meet daily at their local park to drink coffee, complain, skewer the occasional au pair, and to try to get to know the neighborhood's newest mannie, played by Dan Amboyer from Younger and The Blacklist: Redemption.
Aaron Hartzler co-created the comedic new series with Grant Sloss, writer and supervising producer of Younger on TV Land. They wrote the role of Paul explicitly for Rex Lee.
"There aren't enough gay Asian men leading films or TV shows -- they're always sidekicks," Hartzler says.
In fact, according to GLAAD's yearly Where We Are on TV Report, of the 879 series regulars on primetime scripted broadcasts in 2019, only 8 percent were Asian-Pacific Islander.
The idea for the series came about after the co-creators stepped in to help friends who'd recently become dads. "They were basically in a fugue state for six months," Hartzler says. "I would go over to their house on a rotation with a couple of other guys to help hold the twins while they got ready for work in the mornings. At some point, holding two screaming babies and wondering if my arms were going to fall off, I thought, 'What if this was your job all the time?'"
In that moment, holding one of two newborns, Vicious Mannies was conceived, and now, the full first season can be seen on YouTube.
Vicious Manniesstarring Dan Amboyer, Rex Lee, and Aaron Hartzler is available on YouTube.