Thursday, March 28, 2024

Review: ‘City So Real’ – A Stirring Look At Chicago in 5 Episodes Premiering Tonight / Watch Trailer

*(Via Sun Times) – Chicago, you should watch it.

Everybody everywhere else, you should watch it, too. Seek out “City So Real” either to confirm your suspicions about how this city functions, or to affirm your idea of Chicago as the brash epitome of American character, from politics on down. Or up.

There’s another way to watch it, too: as a gradual realization that Chicago is neither Trump’s idea of Chicago (hell) or the typical thin-skinned civic booster’s idea of Chicago (heaven). The grand, sprawling five-episode docuseries complicates and humanizes your idea of the place.

Premiering 6 p.m. Central/7 p.m. Pacific and Eastern Standard time Thursday on National Geographic Channel, then available Friday on Hulu, “City So Real” covers nearly three staggering years. Those years include the most recent mayoral race up through a newly added fifth chapter devoted to the early- and mid-2020 pandemic fallout and every sort of social upheaval, violent as well as peaceable.

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A police officer during a protest in a scene from "City So Real."

“Never a lovely so real”: That’s how Nelson Algren described the city, comparing his feelings for it to “loving a woman with a broken nose.” The series is one of director Steve James’ peak examples of civic self-portraiture (without Algren’s attitudes toward women), and the latest stirring achievement from the maker of “Hoop Dreams,” “The Interrupters” and “America to Me.”

The opening seconds feature a close-up of the gravestone of Laquan McDonald, fatally shot 16 times in 2014 by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. This seems so long ago now. Even so, Van Dyke’s trial; two-term mayor Rahm Emanuel’s unsuccessful bid to keep the telltale dash-cam video a private matter; the widespread community outrage; all this is more than enough for one series.

Get the rest of this Chicago Sun Times review of “City So Real,” HERE.

 

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