Kim's Convenience ending its run after 5 seasons for hit show
The Calgary-connected hit comedy Kim's Convenience will be ending after its fifth season finishes airing on CBC.
The show's producers made the announcement Monday on Twitter, to the shock and dismay of the show's fans. It was popular in Canada and abroad, as the CBC comedy found fans internationally when it was added to Netflix's international library.
Co-creators Ins Choi and Kevin White told the show's producers they were moving on to other projects, according to the Twitter announcement.
“Authenticity of storytelling is at the center of the success of Kim's Convenience,” read a statement on Twitter attributed to Kim's Convenience's producers.
“Given (Choi and White's) departure from the series, we have come to the difficult conclusion that we cannot deliver another season of the same heart and quality that has made the show so special.”
The show provided launching points for Winston Churchill High School grad Paul Sun-hyung Lee, who played Kim family patriarch Appa on the show and scored a job on the Disney+ hit show The Mandalorian as X-wing pilot Captain Carson Teva, and Canadian actor
Simu Liu, who played Jung and was cast as Shang-chi in the upcoming Marvel movie Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Sun-hyung Lee said he was “heartbroken” and felt “a profound sense of loss and sadness” in several Monday tweets.
The show also had another prominent Calgary connection in Andrew Phung, the Loose Moose Theatre alum and Bishop Mcnally grad who won multiple Canadian Screen Awards for his portrayal of Kimchee.
Phung called it “a bittersweet end to one of the greatest experiences of my life” on Twitter.
The show was adapted from Choi's play of the same name, which debuted at the 2011 Toronto Fringe Festival — with Sun-hyung Lee in the same role he would make famous on the small screen — before it was remounted for the 2012 season by Toronto theatre Soulpepper. The play came to Calgary to open Theatre Calgary's 2013-14 season, with Sun-hyung Lee reprising his role.