Ronny Chieng: International Student

Review of Season 1

Click here for a video version of this review: https://youtu.be/4rNmNNJDmms

Ronny Chieng: International Student is a 2017 series on Netflix that follows the misadventures of Ronny, a Malaysian student studying law at an Australian university. He's smart and driven, but he is also blunt and barbed, so this and the cultural differences and between him and his fellow students are the sources of many shenanigans.

The first three episodes, especially the one about the two football teams had moments that were knee-slappingly funny, and the combo of Ronny and his mixture of friends work very well together. They play a lot on the differences between Asian and Australian cultures, but in such a way that is balanced and not a full on "woke police" kind of way. Likewise, its digs at woke culture in universities is prodded at gently rather than slapping you in the face like it has some kind of message.

The series starts off strong with those three great episodes but fades hard after that. The rest of the series scored some light chuckles at best, before ending reasonably strongly with the episode about the final semester exam.

Overall its a good bit of light humour with some very funny moments here and there.