So when it came to Netflix over the summer, there was already anticipation building. • Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Mr. Sang-il Kim ("Appa"). KIM’S CONVENIENCE, the funny, heartfelt story of the Kim family and their downtown convenience store, returns for a third season. But Mr. Kim honestly just thinks the poster is ugly and that parades are annoying and to prove it, he comes up with a clever ploy on the fly. Creator Ins Choi, whose family moved from Korea and settled in Toronto when he was very young, started penning Kim's Convenience as a … Mr. Kim is traditional, proud and stubborn, practical, opinionated and blunt. "I just wanted to fit in with everybody else.". To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. A new female pastor strikes a chord with Appa. View production, box office, & company info. You can binge-watch the first two seasons on Netflix, but then you'll have to wait for Season 3, unless, of course, you're in Canada. LEE: (As Appa) Yeah, yeah, yeah, look, look, look, I am not homopebek (ph). It then became a hit at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2011, which led to a years-long theater tour of Canada. "It's a very, very funny season," Choi says. NPR's Ashley Westerman has more on this one-of-a-kind sitcom. Pastor Choi. At the outset of the show, Lee says he couldn't do a Korean immigrant's accent. LEE: (As Appa) I'm not conspiracy theory - conspiracy truth. With Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Jean Yoon, Andrea Bang, Simu Liu. She says "Kim's Convenience" is refreshing. KIM'S CONVENIENCE is based on the award-winning play by Ins Choi, who also adapted it for television. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "KIM'S CONVENIENCE"). That's what the creators and cast of the hit play-turned-sitcom Kim's Convenience, the first Canadian TV show with an all-Asian lead cast, have striven for from the beginning. Kim's Convenience was eventually adapted into a television show of the same name in 2016. At the time, with his acting career off to a bumpy start, he was invited to join the playwriting unit at fu-GEN, a Toronto theater company dedicated to developing Asian-Canadian stories. WESTERMAN: The episode takes off from there into a humorous look at stereotyping. Janet's Photos. WESTERMAN: Nancy Wang Yuen is a media critic and author of the book "Reel Inequality." In Season 3, Ins Choi promises more of what the show is good at: smart comedy with authentic depth. ASHLEY WESTERMAN, BYLINE: "Kim's Convenience" is not your typical show about Asian immigrants. Indeed, Kim's Convenience -- from its setting in a convenience store in downtown Toronto, to the generational differences between the immigrant parents and their children, to the prominence of the Korean church — is infused with the parts of Choi's life that shaped him. "They are three-dimensional characters with wants, with hopes, with needs, with fears. I need it to stand out because my parents gave me a super boring English name. It is Canada's first-ever show with an all-Asian lead cast. Title: "I wasn't seeing Asians on stage, I wasn't seeing Asian stories," he says. And luckily, he says, his parents' only criticism of his performance as Appa has been his Korean. He is 56 years old at the start of the series and estranged from his son Jung, a frayed relationship he gradually attempts to mend beginning in Season 2. Creator of “Kim’s Convenience,” Ins Choi, said in an interview with NPR, “I wasn't seeing Asians on stage, I wasn't seeing Asian stories.” That’s when he decided to produce his own work based on his family life. Everyone's a winner at Handy... some just bigger than others. "I came in with an idea: Write what you know," Choi says. Especially compared to U.S. family sitcoms with Asian-American families, she says. PAUL SUN-HYUNG LEE: (As Appa) What word you using? "When it finally came, I think people in the U.S. were just so excited to see yet another sitcom that seemed less clownish, that had kind of a tone that made people think," Yuen says. Between Appa's antics or Umma's approach to parenting, the show is quippy and smartly written. Appa (PAUL SUN-HYUNG LEE) and Umma (JEAN YOON) try to be good parents and good partners whether spicing up their love life, navigating the unfamiliar landscape of couples therapy or discovering the pitfalls of shants (shorts + pants). All my friends growing up in the '80s, '90s, their parents owned convenience stores, and I wanted it to be funny. And it was like a key turning in my head, and his voice just started coming out.