The new TV series Men at Work strives to shed light on 30-something single life from the male perspective. Star Michael Cassidy gives his take on male matters of the heart.

The TBS show recycles a staple sitcom theme ' being 30 and unattached in New York City with a 9-to-5 schedule that mostly entails haunting the same diner ' but its difference is that it depicts the behind-closed-doors commiserations of single men.

 A central theme is the role of friendship in weathering dating purgatory, portrayed through four coworkers-turned-bosom-buddies who work at Full Steam magazine: photographer and professional womanizer Gibbs (James Lesure), Michael Cassidy as pretty-boy Tyler, recently dumped features writer Milo (Danny Masterson) and geeky ad salesman Neal (Adam Busch), the sole member of the bunch who is in a long-term relationship.

'I think it's an accurate, honest look at how men talk to each other. It's really a show that has all of the conversations that men have that women don't know they're having. Or in some cases, the conversations that men are having with women that their friends don't know they're having. And I think it's a unique take on those two dynamics,' Cassidy told The Jakarta Post in a telephone interview.

Married for seven years, the 30-year-old admits to consulting single friends on certain vagaries of the dating game, a landscape that has been overhauled by the advent of instant messaging and texting.

'I got married before text ' I think we had texting seven years ago but we weren't using it the way we use it now. And definitely my wife and I have been together since before there was an Internet connection in my home so I don't know much about the dating game and I do have to ask about stuff like that,' chuckles Cassidy, best known for his role as Zach Stevens on Fox's The O.C.

Cassidy's character, Tyler, while content with short-lived relationships, applies himself to matchmaking his broken-hearted friend Milo with the literal seriousness of a criminal stakeout, even reserving every table in the quarry's favorite coffee shop by ordering enough lattes for every seat.

In this respect, Cassidy says, he and Tyler are similar.

'Tyler is trying to set Milo up and he gets way more excited about the setup than Milo does and that is definitely something that's straight out of my life, single or married. I like to set my friends up, I wanna know how it went, I'm really nosy and all of that stuff that Tyler gets involved in I absolutely share with him.'

With his gelled hair and self-professed 'chiseled face', celebrity features writer Tyler is the ever-confident spark plug who affects having never known the sting of rebuffed affections. In a rare moment in Season 1, Tyler confesses, 'Maybe when it comes to love I talk a big game but deep down I'm just afraid of getting hurt.'

'Really?' says Milo.

'No, look at me! Do you think this misses a lot of connections?' Tyler scoffs. As the four friends fess up about their love lives over coffee in the office break room, there are exclamations of 'You did not!'; ill advice is doled out (such as when Milo convinces Tyler to crash the funeral of his date's grandfather) and relationship-bruised egos are stroked.

Such familiarities are the reason Men at Work has been dubbed the 'male version' of HBO's Sex and the City series, which portrays the romantic forays of four single career-women. Despite being happily married to his high school sweetheart, Laura Eichhorn, Cassidy admits that if he were to meet serial dater Tyler in real life, he would ask his character for advice, and not the reverse.

'I've gotta say, Tyler seems like he's got it all figured out. He's a lot more comfortable in his own skin than I am, so I think if I met Tyler in real life I would say 'Hey man, how are you doing what you're doing?' and 'Can you help me with my life?''

Laughing matters

What Cassidy relishes most about this latest role is filming in front of a live audience at the end of each week, and learning about Tyler's quirks as the show progresses.

'My favorite thing about Tyler specifically is when they write a joke about something that I was doing alone when no one else was around,' Cassidy laughs, referring to an episode in the first season where audiences discover that Tyler's guilty pleasure is his automated talking toilet. 'We see Tyler make the joke about drinking wine in the bathtub and listening to a particular kind of music. There are certain things that he says and does that sort of come out of nowhere; and those are the funniest, fun things to learn about Tyler as you go along,' says the American actor.

Season 2, which airs on beTV at 7:30pm on Mondays to Thursdays, boasts a slew of guest stars, including Cassidy's former The O.C. co-star Ben Mackenzie. He stars as the handsome ex-husband of Tyler's new flame, a single mother played by Bethany Joy Lenz, whom Tyler initially mistakes for a 'good-looking male babysitter'. Also guest-starring are Gossip Girl's Jessica Szohr and Mark-Paul Gosselaar from TNT's Franklin & Bash (2011-present).

'It's really cool and it changes up the vibe, too. It's not just the show where the four of us are bouncing off each other all the time. We have a new boss in Season 2 and we get all these new people that definitely throw us a little bit off our game and keep it fresh.'

Cassidy's career in TV began coincidentally after he auditioned for the title role in Superman Returns and lost to Brandon Routh. One of the film's then directors took a shine to Cassidy and cast him as high school student Zach Stevens in Season 2 of The O.C. (2004-2005), which examines the pecking order in the wealthy harbor-front community of Newport Beach, California. In 2007 Cassidy landed the role of Cliff Wiatt in the CW's Hidden Palms and as Grant Gabriel in the seventh season of Smallville, the love interest of Lois Lane and editor of Daily Planet (a fictional newspaper in the DC comics universe) who turned out to be the cloned and aged brother of Lex Luthor.

He is grateful for the longevity of his career in TV; he feels his roles have tallied with his growth as both an actor and a person.

'I feel very fortunate that I have been able to work for as long as I have in TV, that there is an actual chronology that people can relate to ' and also the timing of my own life ['¦] I've always been on shows that people my age watch. So when I was on The O.C., I was the age of the people who were watching it as well and that's really cool, too, for my family and friends, and my brother who's a little bit younger than me, and my wife and all of us,' Cassidy says.

'My family has sort of watched me grow up and grown up with me as well. I mean that's cool, those aren't the things that I thought about when I decided to be an actor at all.'

' Photos courtesy of beTV

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