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Chinese Burn is a new BBC Three comedy pilot for which the billing states will “smash all Chinese stereotypes with a round-house kick”. It doesn’t, really.
It’s centred around three young Chinese women: Elizabeth (Shin-Fei Chen) – the “failed Chinese daughter” who’s a budding sommelier, Jackie (Yennis Cheung) – a struggling actress who’s sick of being typecast as Thai hookers and the like, and Fufu (Yuyu Rau) – a rich Asian woman with far too much money, since she’s a Buddhist princess, so will be of use to the others as they’re having trouble paying the rent with their dead end jobs.
I got some minor laughs out of this, with Elizabeth and Jackie working well together, but when it came to the comedy, there’s very little we haven’t seen before, and so I found this a passable 23 minutes and not too much more.
Chinese Burn is available on BBC Three from 10am today.
Score: 4/10
Director: Chris Cottam
Producer: Alex Smith
Writers: Yennis Cheung and Shin-Fei Chen
Executive Producer: Ash Atalla
Music: Yennis Cheung, Darren Stone and Yuyu Rau
Cast:
Elizabeth: Shin-Fei Chen
Jackie: Yennis Cheung
Fufu: Yuyu Rau
Sue: Felicity Montagu
Cockney Driver: Henry Perryment
Dominic: Abubakar Salim
Casting Director: Cicely Giddings
Huang Lo: Sheng-Chien Tsai
Dik Lo: Logan Wong
Olly: Christopher O’Shea
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.