#team rl

Today in Vietnamese BL referencing Thai BL, we have two girls who hated each other bonding over being bl fangirls. Maybe they’re just going to be the shipper friends, but with Thu Ha directing there is a chance this will turn romantic and it would be very fun if so.

This is my attempt to make a little bit of sense of the production side of Vietnamese BL. As a tiny bit of background, BL is very popular in Vietnam, especially Thai BL, but it’s hard to get the budget to produce it. At the same time, it attracts international attention, which isn’t common for Vietnamese media. A lot of actors have actually appeared in multiple BLs but Thai-style imaginary couple co-branding doesn’t seem to be much of a thing. Maybe a little playing with that in promo for a specific series, but that’s it. MDL doesn’t include Vietnamese shows so that made this...fun.

@absolutebl​ and @heretherebedork​ already have guides to VBL here and here that describe some of the series mentioned, so check out their blogs, and also feel free to ask my for anything from recommendations to speculation.

A note on names: Vietnamese names go family name - middle name - given name, but a lot of time western name order is used in credits. But also family names aren’t used that much and sometimes are left out even of credits. What is used varies from show to show. So I’m about to be wildly inconsistent and just use whatever I happened to see in whatever credits I was looking at when I made notes, and I was too lazy to include diacritical markers, which often get left out in the credits anyway.

Ho Si Hau/O2 Production

Ho Si Hau has been making BL since at least 2017. In around 2020 he discovered actor Ba Vinh and proceeded to cast him in pretty much everything he’s made since and shows no signs of stopping. O2 is his own production company, but he also directed You Are Ma Boy for D GROUP Media. He has a few actors he works with repeatedly (and I think is their agent). It’s been a rough road (including him being repeatedly accused of fraud and oversharing a bit in his emails) but he’s managed to harness the power of international crowdfunding. He is absolutely a BL director and just desperately wants to continue making more and more BL. I can’t remember him ever including trans or lesbian characters. His works are generally pretty domestic, although he does have one high school series and one in the planning stages. He seems to be trying to explore some interesting themes, like including a temporarily disabled character in Want to See You, touching on the lack of gay marriage with Mr. Cinderella, and some stuff regarding filial piety and child abuse in Nation’s Brother, but a lot of this has been getting lost in execution. Loves a faen fatal way, way, way too much. Based both on behind the scene footage he does seem to workshop his actors for intimacy and the results speak for themselves. 

Want to See You Mr. Cinderella You Are Ma Boy The Most Peaceful Place is Your Place Nation's Brother The Ring Goes Missing Ngày Em Đến Active Boys

Oril Nguyen

Oril Nguyen works mostly with MCV, which produces a lot of things other than BL, but also directed Tien Bromance Extra: My Small Family (we’ll be getting to Tien Bromance in a second). He’s been directing BL since at least 2017. He’s somehow even more domestic than Ho Si Hau and has directed two series where the leads have an adopted child, My Monster in Law 2 and Tien Bromance Extra: My Small Family. My Monster in Law is also notable for including a couple that got legally married in New York prior to the events of the series. He includes trans side characters but no lesbians come to mind. His works are generally light and funny, although I’d say there’s a bit more to Follow My Sunshine and The Promise. Very good at directing intimacy and must also workshop his actors.

The Promise Beef, Cupcakes and Him Hey Rival, I Love You! My Monster in Law Hey! First Love Tien Bromance Extra: My Small Family Follow My Sunshine

Nguyen Huu Tien 

He’s not BL director, but he did direct queer movie Bridge of Destiny, which he did not appear in. He has his own production company, Duoc Si Tien. Yes, this is the Tien Bromance guy. He’s one of the leads in Tien Bromance and Sea Him. I think he at least partially self-funded those. He really loves film and playing with genre and also seems to like attention and appears on reality shows, so I feel like that explains a lot. Expect anything from him to be absolutely wild. Just bonkers. Appears to have a horror movie called Hanh Phuc Mau coming out soon. He’s acted twice in series with Huu Tai, but that’s less co-branding and more that he really likes to work with Huu Tai, who he also cast in Bridge of Destiny.

Thu Ha/Team RL 

Director of the excellent Stupid Boys, Stupid Love and then the connected You Are My Sunshine and You Are My Stupid Boy. Stupid Boys, Stupid Love included a GL couple with a butch character. The first of those seemed to have the highest production value and was the best one. The Star Always Follow You is coming out soon from Team RL, presumably with the same director and definitely using familiar actors, including the BL couple from SBSL/YAMSB being paired again. The two most recent series suffered from low production quality. Low heat, but good chemistry and the low heat works for the cute high school settings.

Huy Hung/CifTV  

CifTV’s production is fairly low budget and they do a lot of chat based shows instead of live action. Their live action series are also low budget and range from ok to truly terrible. Huy Hung directed My Little Sister, an actual GL, for them and was previously an editor for CifTV’s Neighbor Guy, Roommate, and My Brother. My Little Sister is high school and stepsister’s trope but not as bad as I was expecting based on those two facts and my other experiences with CifTV. Huy Hung also directed the unfinished GL School’s Out Let’s Date Now for TBR, but is most notable for directing My Lascivious Boss for Pap, which had a relatively decent budget and script and which I really like. Great range of gender and sexuality representation overall. Not good at directing intimacy, expect dead fish kisses, if any. Works with Nam Mario from MLB a lot.

Danny/AB Studio 

Danny writes and directs, wrote Fools, didn’t direct it. Directed Stage of Love, Vietnam’s only uni BL (unless I got my vocab wrong and it was set in high school). AB released one episode of The Letters, but nothing else BL since then and were last co-producing a het highschool series. Would love to see them back on the BL side.

609 tv

I don’t really know what to put here. They don’t produce BL technically? They mostly make commercials and movies that basically function as public service announcements about stuff like HIV and PrEP (I assume this gets them funding), aimed at a gay male audience. One of these, Hy, was screened at the US Consulate. Si was depressing, don’t watch it. Threesome Game was fun. Handsome Doctor, a medical cross-dressing comedy promoting feminism and mental health treatment, featured a bunch of familiar BLish tropes for some reason despite not being a romance and having a straight (but gnc) female lead, and made no sense whatsoever as a thing that existed, but I adored it and wish had gotten past two episodes. 

Holy Thang/YoungLife TiVi