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When a novel that has an unusual concept is adapted for TV, it helps when the author who came up with the concept is heavily involved in the show’s creation. In the case of Interior Chinatown, Charles Yu has adapted his novel for the screen, which can only help. Also on board is Taika Waititi, who is no stranger to strange series concepts.
INTERIOR CHINATOWN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: In an alleyway behind a restaurant, Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang) and Fatty Choi (Ronny Chieng) take garbage out to the dumpster. Willis talks about how he’d like to find a body, like in the cold open of a cop show.
The Gist: Fatty thinks his friend is crazy, of course, but it’s all part of Willis wanting to be less of a background player in life, a witness instead of a waiter. Willis actually ends up witnessing something that night: A woman is grabbed by two men and shoved into a waiting car.
As he tries to chase the kidnappers down, we see that he’s part of a cop show called Black & White: Impossible Crimes Unit that takes place in a city called Port Harbour. The stars are two police detectives: Sarah Green (Lisa Gilroy) and Miles Turner (Sullivan Jones).
The next day, Green and Turner arrive in Chinatown looking for the woman who got taken, but for some reason, Willis can’t open the door of the restaurant to go out and talk with them. While he’s frustrated with that, he has other things on his mind, namely the fact that it’s his missing brother’s birthday. He goes up to the apartment of his mother Lily (Diana Lin) to sit with her in the dark as she remembers her son; he brings food to his reclusive father Joe (Tzi Ma), who lives upstairs.
Watching a news story about the missing woman, Willis becomes smitten by a new detective on the case, Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet). He and Fatty try to figure out what kind of Asian she is, and it seems like there’s some disagreement. He’s even more entranced when she comes into the restaurant, and he takes his shot. He goes to her table to tell her what he saw, and she has him help collect evidence from a gang leader who is there to negotiate a deal involving the missing woman.
It doesn’t take long for the gang wars that Lana tells Willis about, the ones she wants to clean up, come to the Golden Palace restaurant. Fatty, Willis and his “B+” kung-fu skills get in the middle of a gang battle at the restaurant; they hold their own for a bit but then get their butts kicked. But the fight gives Willis even more incentive to change the trajectory of his story, especially after Lana tells him about a role his brother had in what she’s investigating.
Photo: Mike Taing/HuluWhat Shows Will It Remind You Of? Interior Chinatown reminds us of The Brothers Sun, but with a twist we’ll talk about below.
Our Take: Charles Yu created Interior Chinatown based on his National Book award-winning novel of the same name; Taika Waititi, who is also one of the executive producers, directed the first episode. It’s mostly a funny, action-filled story about how Willis Wu tries to make his life count for something, and how that effort gets him embroiled in something unexpected, but story is couched in a conceit that we’re not sure was translated from the novel very well, at least at first.
Waititi uses different ways to show that Willis’ life is that of a background extra on a Law & Order-style cop show, like changing the lighting when the scenes from the show-within-a-show take place in Willis’ vicinity. There are only tube TVs, the cop cars are boxy, late-’80s vintage, and no one has cell phones. So it leads us to believe that the show is a period piece.
But in one scene, Lana takes Willis to a club that only serves hard seltzer, and all the cars parked around it are modern. It’s the only place they can talk, she says. Just when you think that you’re in the current timeframe, though, there’s a product shot and voice over for the hard seltzer being served. So Lana and Willis were talking within a contemporary commercial for a rerun of a show that might be 30 years old.
It’s a conceit that may be tough to sustain over 10 episodes; it took awhile for us to wrap our minds around what was going on, and we’re still not 100 percent sure if any of what was portrayed is going on in the “real world” of the show or on the show within the show.
The performances are all great, especially Yang and Bennet, with Chieng providing reliable comedic relief. We actually are interested in seeing what Willis digs up as he helps Lana figure out who all the gangs and players are in Chinatown, and of course it’ll be fun to see them get closer in the process. But will the show-within-the-show concept fade away or become a distraction? It’s hard to see that concept being anything but distracting, so we hope it’s the former.
Photo: HuluSex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Willis tells Lana “I’m in,” then we see him trapped inside a screen as he walks into the middle of the street outside the restaurant.
Sleeper Star: Annie Chang is Audrey Chan, a very nice girl who “for some reason,” as Fatty says it, is into Willis. We hope to see more of her, whether she stays nice or takes a turn.
Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We like Interior Chinatown enough to look past the “stuck in a cop show” conceit, but we just hope it doesn’t weigh the show down as the season continues.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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