Link: Kim’s Convenience, and the method behind the seeming madness of CBC’s programming

From David Berry of The National Post:

Link: Kim’s Convenience, and the method behind the seeming madness of CBC’s programming
If nothing can be everything to everyone, the CBC can at least be nothing to anyone.

I don’t know that our public broadcaster will ever shake its reputation for striving cluelessness when it comes to what, exactly, Canadians want to see on television. There’s all that history, for a start, and it’s a nice convenient narrative that works for everyone from grumpy free-marketers who see “heritage funding” as just another term for setting their hard-earned tax dollars on fire to sniffing aesthetes who think art isn’t art unless each and every second of it is a punishing ordeal designed to shake your understanding of human experience to its very core. Continue reading. 

From Katherine Monk of The Ex-Press

New CBC sitcom exposes The Convenience Truth
Andrea Bang thanks the Toronto Blue Jays. Not only did the team win the required games to advance, they pushed back the network premiere of her new show, Kim’s Convenience.

The new CBC comedy based on Ins Choi’s award-winning Fringe play airs this evening, but it was originally slated to air last Tuesday – in the heat of the Blue Jays’ wild card bid. The network wisely aired the ballgame instead, but Bang wasn’t depressed about the delay. Continue reading.

From Courtney Shea of Toronto Life:

Link: Q&A: Ins Choi, the writer behind CBC’s new comedy Kim’s Convenience
In 2011, Kim’s Convenience upstaged every other show at the Toronto Fringe Festival and earned the Best New Play award for its creator, Ins Choi. Five years later, the comedy—about a Korean family and their variety store in Regent Park—is the centrepiece of CBC’s fall prime-time lineup, premiering tonight at 9 p.m. (it got bumped by the Blue Jays last Tuesday), and the first Canadian TV series to feature an entirely Asian cast. We spoke to Choi about the pressure of pioneering, why Kim’s Convenience isn’t a “Korean show” and how the Asian–North American entertainment community can bury Long Duk Dong once and for all. Continue reading.