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‘Interior Chinatown’ Struggles to Turn an Allegorical Novel Into a Show: TV Review
Charles Yu adapts his 2020 novel 'Interior Chinatown' into a Hulu series that struggles to turn an allegory into a show.
The visual element allows the show expertly to ape the rhythms and mock the clichés of a “Law & Order”-like franchise; Gilroy, in particular, excels at delivering absurd dialogue that pushes quippy banter to its limit. Located in the fictional city of Port Harbor, Willis’ home is a Chinatown in the “forget it, Jake” sense — in the public imagination, it’s a den of iniquity where crimes go down, not a place where people live. Those efforts nonetheless take up many hours of screen time, and are padded out by even thinner material like Willis’ friend Fatty (Ronny Chieng) accidentally drawing crowds to Golden Palace by being overly rude to white patrons — a one-note joke sustained for too many beats.
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