Looking into ‘Interior Chinatown’

I was not familiar with Charles Yu’s original novel and namesake of the show. Perhaps the most ringing endorsement of Interior Chinatown is that after five episodes (half of the full season order, but all that was provided for the screeners) is that I ordered a copy of the book because I was intimately curious with how such a clever metatextual piece of fiction functioned in a text-based format, but I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Interior Chinatown is a new series premiering on November 19th that plays jump rope with genre. Charles Yu also serves as the showrunner series, whose leading man is Jimmy O. Yang (who I was introduced to in Silicon Valley) and whose pilot was directed by Taiki Waititi (his production company is also one of sixth others involved with the series). The trailer itself spoke to all of my sensitivities. Crime procedurals. Asian American representation in media (specifically Chinese-American media, which should not come as a surprise given the title of the series). A slight film noir bent as Yang’s Willus Wu becomes an unsuspecting witness to an abduction and then becomes involved in a series of criminal investigations. You may remember, but Pornsak Pichetshote’s The Good Asian was one of my favorite comics of yesterday, and while Interior Chinatown had a decidedly more comedic bent, the fact that any comparison can be drawn in favorable. The show wastes absolutely no time vamping off the genre it so clearly loves as Willis informs his fri…