Cultural Diversity in Canadian Television: The Case of CBC’s Kim’s Convenience

Abstract

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Kim’s Convenience is the first Asian-led sitcom in Canadian broadcasting. This popular sitcom, lauded by both audiences and the television industry, joins the wave of minority-led production which started only recently in Canada, despite Canada’s pride in multiculturalism as one of its national characteristics. Emerging within Canada’s unique model of “multiculturalism within a bilingual framework,” Kim’s Convenience, with a story about a third-language Korean Canadian immigrant family, offers a critical site to understand how cultural diversity is communicated in Canadian television today. This study conducts a thematic analysis of Seasons One and Two with a special focus on interactions across cultures characterized by social categories such as ethnicity/race, gender, class, language, and sexuality.