Our take
When adapting a novel, television showrunners have to transform the text into video, so sometimes, things get cut, lines get shortened, and sometimes what you and the author imagine from the book doesn’t match up on screen. Luckily, for Interior Chinatown, that’s not the case– the novel is already in a screenplay format, and the mini-series is being handled by the very same guy who wrote it, Charles Wu. The satire novel was pretty experimental, so it’s no surprise that the series holds the same playful energy as the book, but this time, playing with stylistic expectations (see: every time the faux leads enters a room) and genre expectations to create a meta levelling up quest for a background character to finally shine through. And with a stacked cast (Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, and Chloe Bennet), the humorous plot cleverly challenges the ways Hollywood has excluded and stereotyped Asian Americans, and the way this plays out in real life.
The story
Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural, tries to find his way into the larger story–and along the way discovers secrets about the strange world he inhabits and his family's buried history.
Elsewhere
"Interior Chinatown is an ideal binge, with episodes between 30 and 45 minutes, smartly paced action, and effective emotional beats with friends, family, and even a possible romance."
— Proma Khosla
""Interior Chinatown" is a visceral and biting satire of the minuscule and stereotypical roles Asian Americans had to play in American television while being an engaging neo-noir comedy."
— Rendy Jones
Chinatown restaurant worker Willis Wu loves police procedurals, and wishes that he could be as important as the crime fighters he sees on TV. Unbeknownst to him, he’s a background character in fictional police procedural Black and White.
Each episode title is the role Willis learns to play, and it’s just a novel way to structure the entire series.
Charles Wu is a genius to pitch his show idea as a novel with a screenplay format.
The details
The Gentlemen
Guy Ritchie
A Friend of the Family
Mary Ann Broberg & Nick Antosca
Death by Lightning
Mike Makowsky
Killer Soup
Abhishek Chaubey
Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist
Shaye Ogbonna
The Good Mothers
Stephen Butchard
Black Warrant
Satyanshu Singh & Vikramaditya Motwane
Landscapers
Ed Sinclair
Who picked it
Isabella Endrinal is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. She's now free from the corporate night shift. Previous articles have been published in outlets such as NANG Magazine. She's currently catching up on some classic films… if she isn't coping with the fact that the Haikyu anime will end soon.
