If we’re all the heroes of our own stories, that’s generally as it should be. Such a belief is often what motivates us to shape our lives and find meaning in them. How someone might think otherwise and how it can be corrected is the primary concern of Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown.
Based on Yu’s book of the same name, it doesn’t so much rewrite a tired premise as attempt to dissect how such premises came to be, and how they sometimes keep people from stepping out of their designated places. If the show isn’t quite a scathing indictment of assimilation and the racist expectations therein, it at least makes its emphasis on the comedic murder mystery a fun, intriguing ride, as waiter and aspiring actor Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang) struggles to step into the spotlight of his own life.
In the proud tradition of “careful what you wish for,” Willis proclaims his desire to become something besides the background character in someone else’s story just in time to witness an abduction, and he’s quickly pulled into a police procedural that has ties to Chinatown crime lords and his brother’s mysterious disappearance 12 years ago, complete with Law & Order-esque flourishes. There’s a whole lot to dissect in how someone like Willis is seen—or more often, not seen—in your stereotypical crime drama.
Produced by Taika Waititi, Interior Chinatown has much of his signature tongue-in-cheek flourishes, as it also satirizes cop shows and the roles Asian Americans typically occupy in pop culture. Its ambitions don’t quite live up to what Yu accomplished in the source material, which had the benefit of not only exploring the interiority of its setting, but the spaces its characters were restricted to with a delicately savage touch. It’s a tough transition, taking that approach to an onscreen space, but Yu (who is also the showrunner) makes it riveting. TV-MA, ten 35–45-min episodes
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