CABLE | 'Interior Chinatown' Typecasts A Police Procedural

"Koreans are the most fun Asians."

20th Television

Award-winning Taiwanese-American author Charles Yu adapts his own best-selling second novel, 2020's metatextual Interior Chinatown, for television. Exploring the life of a generic background Asian character in a Law & Order-type '90s police procedural, the hilarious titled Black & White: Impossible Crimes Unit, it stars stand-up comedian Jimmy O. Yang as a Chinese restaurant worker who longs for a lead role in his own life.

Produced by Taika Waititi, who also directs the pilot, the action-comedy series uses episodic conventions to self-referentially investigate a cold case involving Yang's missing "Kung Fu Guy" brother (Chris Pang). Ronny Chieng and Chloe Bennet co-star as typical cop show sidekicks who have their roles in uncovering the mystery. Yang levels up his dramatic acting chops but not everything quite fits in the genre mashup of shifting moods on screen.

Yu cleverly translates his reality-bending, meta-literary screenplay material with a knowing style and verve for satirical adaptation. Perhaps being a dissection of television in conception made its move to actual TV a mismatch of tones. Interior Chinatown could have easily used more elements from the page as a more writerly effort about racial stereotypes and typecasting. However, its intact narrative structure still works but needs some tweaking at the very least.

Interior Chinatown's ten-episode season is available to stream on Disney+ Star in Canada (and on Hulu in the U.S.).


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