Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook Hits Apple TV on November 6, and She Is Reopening Her Family's Restaurant

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Apple TV's November starts with a cooking show from someone who cannot cook. Awkwafina: The Unlikely Cook premieres on Friday, November 6, eight episodes, and the premise is that Nora Lum, which is Awkwafina's real name, wants to reopen Lum's, the Cantonese restaurant her great-grandfather founded in Flushing, Queens, and has no kitchen training whatsoever. So she goes on a road trip to get some.

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The trailer came out at the start of October and it is funnier than most scripted comedy on the service. She takes a crash course at the Culinary Institute of America, goes to Texas for barbecue with Jimmy O. Yang, and learns from Roy Choi and Martin Yan, who is a legend to anyone who grew up with Yan Can Cook on public television. The last episode is opening night at Lum's, with her grandmother as the diner she has to impress.

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Twofour makes it, the company behind The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy, and the format is the same: a famous person who is out of their depth, a lot of travel, and a payoff that is more emotional than the setup suggests. Levy's show worked because he was genuinely uncomfortable. Awkwafina's version works because she is genuinely bad at this and knows it.

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I like that it is a family story rather than a celebrity vanity project. Lum's was a real place, the restaurant is part of why she grew up where she did, and Flushing's Chinatown is one of the great food neighbourhoods in New York and rarely gets this kind of attention. If the show gets the neighbourhood right it will be worth it for that alone.

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Apple is at 14.99 a month now, which is a lot for one cooking show, but November also has Stick, 12 12 12 and Way of the Warrior Kid, so the month is stacked. Is a celebrity cooking show something you would actually sit through?