American Vandal creators trade poop jokes for esports in Players trailer
Don’t hate the player, hate the Players, a new mockumentary series about esports
In 2018, Netflix canceled American Vandal, the groundbreaking, Peabody-award-winning mockumentary series. A crushing blow for television, but their loss is Paramount+’s gain.
Co-created by Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault, Players is a new mockumentary series on Paramount+ about an aging pro–League Of Legends player and the young prodigy taking his spot. Don’t worry. Yacenda and Perrault haven’t lost their touch, though. The primary conflict is between gamers named Creamcheese and Organizm, aka P.J., aka Piss Jar.
Here’s the full synopsis:
Players is a comedic documentary-style series that follows a fictional pro League Of Legends esports team as they pursue their first championship after years of close calls and heartache. To win it all, they will need their prodigy, a 17-year-old rookie, and their 27-year-old veteran to put their egos aside and work together.
As fans of American Vandal, we have high hopes for this one. Yacenda and Perrault have an ear for Gen Z’s interests, and as we aging millennials head into our twilight years, we’re happy to have them explain things like esports in a way we can understand. We’ll all be gone soon, so it’s time to make a concerted effort to understand pro-gaming, which, as many olds complain, feels a bit like going over to a friend’s house and watching them play video games. Sure, it’s fun watching your friend beat Maximum Carnage on Super Nintendo for a little while, but an entire sleepover?
The last time we saw Yacenda and Perrault, they were making the transition from dick jokes to poop jokes, turning both into glorious and astute sendups of true crime. So we hold out hope that Piss Jar is a sign that they haven’t done any growing in the last four years.
Players premieres on Paramount+ on June 16 with three episodes. New episodes will drop weekly on Thursday.