Bobby Rice moved to Los Angeles and found out he was funny.

And he now has a Tubi and Apple TV+ comedy series to prove it.

The Coronado High School graduate’s new eight-episode parody, “Hot Kitchen,” is a spoof on reality kitchen competition shows like “Top Chef.” In Rice’s version, eight over-the-top characters compete in culinary challenges and get judged by pretentious chefs.

Find it online for free at TubiTV.com and with a subscription at tv.apple.com.

“I never intended to have such a comedy background, but I found a home there. I enjoyed it,” Rice said from North Hollywood, where he’s lived for two decades. “It taught me how to take risks and be weird and silly and be OK with that. It taught me to listen.”

Rice, who wrote and directed the show, also stars as Skip Hallisy, the host of the competition. Skip is his father’s name and Hallisy is the name of his best friend from high school.

And, as an Easter egg, one of his characters, Gage, an acerbic, competitive chef, hails from Colorado Springs, where he runs the fictional restaurant Shoo Fly.

The series holds a special meaning for Rice, in addition to being his first TV show. During filming, his father was dying of cancer.

“I promised him I would finish the show before coming home to see him, because it was close to the end for him,” Rice said. “I wrapped and flew to Colorado Springs the next morning and got to show him footage. He died a few weeks later. His message was finish the job – I know this is important to you. I dedicated the series to him.”

After high school, Rice spent two years at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where his roommate asked him to star in his short films. When he could no longer afford school, he tagged along with his buddies to L.A., where they went to film school and Rice explored acting.

“I was a great student, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Rice said. “If I knew improv comedy or writing comedy was a job, I would have pursued it, but I had no idea.”

Hollywood was gentle with him as he did the usual auditioning and serving tables schtick. His first job came with big names, when he scored work as an extra on the 2004 Martin Scorsese film “The Aviator,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio. That gig was followed by a small web series.

And then improv came along, when he took classes at The Groundlings, a famous improv and sketch comedy troupe and school in L.A., and learned to write comedy and be funny. Friends noticed and started asking him to write for and perform in their shows. He wrote pilots for NBC and sketch comedies for L.A. theaters and booked comedian Randy Rainbow’s touring show.

When two producers, whom he’d met and befriended while working at Macaroni Grill in his early L.A. days, came to him for reality show ideas, “Hot Kitchen” was born.

Since then the trio has produced three other series in the same world with overlapping characters, including “Hot House,” which parodies the reality show “Big Brother” and will be out on Tubi and Apple TV+ soon, and “Hot Hauntings,” a parody of ghost hunting shows, which Rice hopes will be available on Tubi at some point.

“It’s our own Marvel cinematic universe of silly parody,” he said.