Kim's Convenience


2016 12 14    |    etc    no date    + 2024    2025    index    home

I have been off sitcoms for years now, avoiding them completely in favour of drama, family drama (which often has humour). But humour and comedy are not the same animal). But a couple of months ago I watched Kim's Convenience for the first time, and instantly liked it.

It's a simple, Canadian-made show filmed in Toronto, of a family-run convenience store. Nothing's ever too heavy or preachy, but it is sometimes insightful to the weird business that goes on inside families. I hope it gets renewed for a second season. There's no laugh track, no canned laughter, it's all filmed on location so there's no studio trying to look like a location, the characters are likeable, the stories are not forced or overly contrived, it's very typical of how we make sitcoms up here, and it's a nice half-hour that I didn't realise I was missing during my drowning-myself-in-drama. Give it a shot.

As an aside:

When I first moved to the neighbourhood in which I now reside, there was a convenience store two buildings away from me run by a Korean family named Kim. Honestly, that's why it caught my eye. I'm glad it did. That store is now a walk-in clinic which is one of the few places in town you can get halal medications - and Dr. Ibrahim has fabulous bedside manner; though I have since found out that he's moved on to another office, and no longer works there.

(2025 06 14: It then became variously a salon and a campaign office for provincial candidate, and now it stands empty and waiting for lease.)


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