The New Adventures of Charlie Chan The New Adventures of Charlie Chan The New Adventures of Charlie Chan is a British-American crime drama series that aired in the United States in syndicated television from June 1957, to 1958. The first five episodes were made by Vision Productions in the United States, before production switched to the United Kingdom under ITC Entertainment and Television Programs of America. The series, consisting of 39 half-hour monochrome episodes, follows the investigations of the fictional detective Charlie Chan, created by Earl Derr Biggers in 1925. The series follows the convention, established in the Charlie Chan movies, of having the Asian character
Charlie Chan be a positive role model, while others argue that Chan is an offensive stereotype. Critic John Soister argues that Charlie Chan is both; when Biggers created the character, he offered a unique alternative to stereotypical evil Chinamen, a man who was at the same time "sufficiently accommodating in personality... unthreatening in demeanor... and removed from his Asian homeland... to quell any underlying xenophobia." Critic Michael Brodhead argues that "Biggers's sympathetic treatment of the Charlie Chan novels convinces the reader that the author consciously and forthrightly spoke out for the Chinese – a people to be not only accepted but admired.