If you are an insomniac, you may have already taken note of the newest original series to debut exclusively on Hulu early early, this morning, Paul The Male Matchmaker. From the creative minds of Paul Bartholomew and Liz Tuccillo, Paul The Male Matchmaker follows Bartholomew in the titular role as a man who really has no affection for women but who is thrust into working intimately with them every day when he inherits his aunt’s matchmaking business. On paper the guy may be a bit misogynistic, but on-screen, you can’t help but laugh at his (as Tuccillo put it) “buffoonery.”
“I was single and I was complaining about how people still make assumptions about single women: just because you’re single, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re doing something wrong,” Tuccillo explained the conception of the series. “We started watching all of these reality shows that pit single women against each other or tell women what they’re doing wrong, so we came up with this character for Paul of a guy who was sort of like the worst of the worst of those.”
“We came up with the idea together, and we had fun just talking about the character and funny scenarios and little scene-lets that could happen, but Paul then shot some stuff in his house, kind of like a workshop for the idea. And that was, along with our sort of ten episode outline, was what we showed to Warner Brothers. So it was a little different than a normal pitch in that we actually shot stuff,” she continued.
Creating content to live on multiple platforms through the Hulu model certainly allotted Bartholomew and Tuccillo a little more freedom than if they were crafting their stories for the traditional television model. For one thing, they didn’t have to worry about fitting their “idiosyncratic and quirky” idea into a mold for a specific demographic or brand. By having the room to play around-- both with Paul’s own “child-like delivery” as well as their special guest stars’ naughtiness, the story was opened up to new adventures for all.
“If you were to just read the scripts without first seeing me do it, you’d look at the scripts and probably have a darker reaction than to the way I presented,” Bartholomew admitted. “When you read the words, the things I’m saying are pretty awful!”
Whether or not Paul’s intentions are filled with disdain, though, you find yourself laughing at him because very quickly it becomes apparent that he is truly the most clueless one when it comes to love and relationships. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the group of women presented at his clients are strong enough to take what he’s saying with a grain of salt. Their eyes are the audience’s eyes as they judge him-- but are hopeful enough to try what he’s saying anyway on the off chance it might spark a connection.
“We were hoping that by being mean, we were making fun of the people who were being mean,” Tuccillo offered.
Lisa Edelstein, Jennifer Aspen, Janeane Garofalo, David Eigenberg, Jean Louise Kelly, and a cameo from Tuccillo herself are some of the notable familiar faces to pop up in Paul The Male Matchmaker. The entire first season of the series is available now on Hulu to be consumed all at once in a “binge viewing” or marathon way or to watch one or two on a break from work and come back any time for the rest. And if you only have time for one or two episodes to start, Bartholomew suggests starting with the first two and watching chronologically:
“I think the hope is that when you go there, if all of the episodes are there…then hopefully you’ll follow them [all]. The storyline goes through all of them. The first one sets it up [but] I think the first two really give it a sense of what it’s about and can get people hooked.”
Edelstein makes her guest appearance in that second episode, and her role as one of Paul’s clients, a woman looking for love who, with his help, actually does find it in the most surprising of places.
“It was amazing how incredibly game Lisa was. She really went for it!” Tuccillo teased about Edelstein’s unexpected hook-up within the episode.
Edelstein’s matchmaking is actually one of the few successful ones Paul manages in this first season, so we have to imagine that if the series comes back for more, it would feature an entirely new onslaught of women giving this unconventional matchmaker a shot. Both Bartholomew and Tuccillo expressed great enthusiasm for creating more from the show, and hopefully someday expanding and adapting it for television, like Childrens Hospital and Web Therapy before them.
“We are always coming up with more ideas; he’s really a fun character to play with,” Tuccillo shared. “We’d really love for it to be a TV show, and what’s so amazing right now is there are so many new portals cropping up every day. It’s a great time to be developing content!”
Paul The Male Matchmaker can be viewed right now in its entirety or an episode at a time over at Hulu.
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