Kim's Convenience

Kim's Convenience is a Canadian television sitcom that aired on CBC Television from October 2016 to April 2021. It depicts the Korean Canadian Kim family that runs a convenience store in the Moss Park neighbourhood of Toronto: parents "Appa" (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and "Umma" (Jean Yoon) – Korean for dad and mom, respectively – along with their daughter Janet (Andrea Bang) and estranged son Jung (Simu Liu). Other characters include Jung's friend and coworker Kimchee (Andrew Phung) and his manager Shannon (Nicole Power). The series is based on Ins Choi's 2011 play of the same name.
The first season was filmed from June to August 2016 at Showline Studios in Toronto. It is produced by Thunderbird Films in conjunction with Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre Company, with Lee and Yoon reprising their roles from the play. Scripts were created by Choi and Kevin White, who previously wrote for Corner Gas.
The second season premiered September 26, 2017. In July 2018, the series became available outside of Canada when it debuted internationally on Netflix. However, since January 2020, it is no longer available in all markets (e.g., the Netherlands), making the fourth season unavailable to a worldwide audience. The third season premiered January 8, 2019 and the fourth premiered January 7, 2020.
On March 31, 2020, it was initially announced that the show had been renewed for two more seasons, and on March 8, 2021, it was revealed that the show would end after the fifth season, due to the departure of the show's two co-creators. Since the show's cancellation, several of the show's actors have publicly discussed production issues, particularly criticising a lack of diversity among behind-the-scenes staff, although this has been disputed by others.
A spin-off series, Strays, began production in February 2021 after a one-year delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Interior scenes at the store, Handy Car Rental and home are shot at Studio City Toronto (formerly Showline Studios) at 915 Lake Shore Boulevard East, where an exact replica of Mimi Variety, the model for the store, has been recreated. The studio is also used as the exterior of the car rental business. One episode was shot in Koreatown at Bloor and Christie Streets.
The long-established Mimi Variety store at 252 Queen Street East is used for exterior shots and as the model for the interior set built in the studio. While the signage has been adjusted, the "Kim's Convenience" sign uses the same red and green lettering as the original sign. All other sections, such as the "7 DAYS A WEEK" element, are the original signage of Mimi Variety. The owners of the Mimi Variety store have retained the new signage, even though the business has not officially changed its name. The producers also painted a mural on an exterior wall, mostly seen in the credit sequence and for stock transitional shots, as well as for promotional shots.
Episodes for season 5 were filmed in 2020 under strict protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Simu Liu had planned to return to Toronto for the start of production once he was finished shooting Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in Australia. Since filming for both projects overlapped due to delays caused by the pandemic, he was only able to return to Toronto toward the end of production, where he continued shooting for nine days until he had completed "all the stuff that he missed out on".
On March 8, 2021, it was announced that the series would be coming to an end after the fifth season, despite being renewed for a sixth season a year earlier, due to the departure of series creators Choi and White, who decided to move on to other projects after the production completion on the fifth season. The show's producers, Thunderbird Films, ultimately decided not to move forward with the sixth season, believing that they would not be able to deliver the "same heart and quality". One of the aforementioned projects was a spin-off of the show, Strays, which would center on character Shannon Ross, played by Nicole Power, and was developed by White with Kim's producer Ivan Fecan serving as executive producer. Fecan explained that Choi was unsure of how to continue with the show beyond the fifth season. The cast and crew attempted to persuade Choi to remain for the show's planned sixth and final season, but ultimately Choi decided to depart the show. Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, who played Appa in both the series and the original play, said that Choi stopped contacting Lee after speaking with him about staying on the show. He later said the series "died from within...No matter how good it can be, if you don't deal with issues from within and try to gloss it over because everything on the surface looks fantastic and idealistic, then you are just asking for trouble. I think that's the unfortunate lesson from this whole thing." Fecan decided to end the show as he believed the series could not continue without Choi.
On June 2, 2021, cast member Simu Liu claimed that the show suffered from a lack of diversity among writers and producers and that there was discord behind the scenes. He also claimed that actors were not allowed to offer creative input and that the cast was poorly paid. Shortly after, on June 6, 2021, actor Jean Yoon stated on social media that "[A]s an Asian Canadian woman, a Korean-Canadian woman w [sic] more experience and knowledge of the world of my characters, the lack of Asian female, especially Korean writers in the writers' room of Kim's [Convenience] made my life very difficult and the experience of working on the show painful." Liu also stated that he would not reprise his role in the Strays spin-off due to it focusing on Nicole Power's character Shannon, the only white main character from the show. John Doyle of The Globe and Mail noted the complexities of the situation, explaining that since all of the other major characters in Kim's Convenience were drawn from Ins Choi's original theatrical play, and Shannon was the only character who had been newly created specifically for the television series, she was the only character who was the intellectual property of the show's producers and thus the only one who could be spun off without Choi's participation.
Entertainment One released the first two seasons of Kim's Convenience on Region 1 DVD on March 7, 2017.
The show was released to mostly positive reception from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds an approval rating of 100% based on 13 critics' reviews, with an average rating of 9/10. John Doyle of The Globe and Mail wrote that the show "stays away from the pseudo-seriousness that could easily plague a comedy about immigrants and family dynamics." In conclusion, Doyle called it "a clever, generally engaging screwball comedy with an eye on entertainment". The Toronto Star's Tony Wong wrote that "the show is good. Possibly even great. The dialogue is sharp, on point and borderline subversive. It has the potential to be a future classic. It has bite...It's funny and true, but not a reality we typically see reflected on television." Reviewing the series following its release for US audiences on Netflix, Bryan Washington of Vulture remarked on the series' treatment of political issues surrounding immigrants, noting the tensions are never truly in the background but also do not take precedence over the comedy, remarking "I haven't laughed as hard all year, with feeling, as I have alongside the series."
Despite the series being based on a play by Korean Canadian Ins Choi, and Choi writing over a third of the 65 episodes, Rick Salutin, also of the Star, was less enthusiastic of the show's portrayal of minorities on television saying "only accents are funny in Kim's Convenience" and that audiences are "laughing at the characters not with them". Salutin concluded by stating "I don't see why supporting Canadian culture means you should be uncritical, as if someone will take it away if you weren't. You should be most critical about what you care most about like public education or the CBC, you want them to be good not just there". Although not directly a response to Salutin's review, actor Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (Appa) has questioned critics' inclination to cite accents as offensive:
Mark Breslin, founder of the Canadian comedy club chain Yuk Yuk's, was critical of the show's lack of strong humour:
Midway through its first season, Kim's Convenience was estimated by Numeris to have an average audience of 933,000 per episode, with 39% of viewers between the ages of 25 and 54.
For the 5th Canadian Screen Awards in 2017, Kim's Convenience garnered 11 nominations, including Best Comedy Series, Best Actor in a Comedy Series (Lee), Best Actress in a Comedy Series (Yoon and Bang), and Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Phung). Lee won the award for best actor in a continuing leading comedic role for his portrayal of Appa, and Phung won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Kimchee.
Kim's Convenience won two awards at the 2017 Toronto ACTRA Awards, Outstanding Performance - Female for actress Jean Yoon and the Members’ Choice Series Ensemble Award for Best Cast.
The first-season episodes "Ddong Chim" and "Janet's Photos" are 2017 Writers Guild of Canada's Canadian Screenwriting Awards finalists in the TV comedy category.
At the 6th Canadian Screen Awards in 2018, the series received 12 nominations. It won the awards for Best Comedy Series, Best Actor in a Comedy Series (Lee) and Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Phung).
As the show's third season aired in the winter of 2019 rather than the fall of 2018, it did not air inside the eligibility period for the 7th Canadian Screen Awards.