GRAY MATTERS
‘Red Line’ explores many takes on truth
A real-life event had a profound effect on the premise of the CBS limited series “The Red Line.”
The eight-episode series picks up almost immediately after the fictional police shooting death of a gay black doctor, Harrison Brennan (Corey Reynolds), and follows three story lines: his husband, Daniel (Noah Wyle), and their adopted daughter Jira (Aliyah Royale); Officer Paul Evans (Noel Fisher), his brother (Michael Patrick Thornton) and his partner Vic (Elizabeth Laidlaw), and Chicago alderman candidate Tia Young and Jira’s birth mother (Emayatzy Corinealdi).
The program pulls from the headlines, about a combination of similar cases across the country. The aftermath of the shooting death of a black teenager by a Chicago cop changed history, and changed the script.
In 2014, Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by Officer Jason Van Dyke. Initially, Van Dyke was not charged because he claimed McDonald, who was 17, had been behaving erratically, had a knife and was a threat to the cop.
However, dashcam video — which was only released after a judge’s order 13 months later — contradicted Van Dyke’s account, and in October 2018, a jury found him guilty of murder.
Van Dyke was convicted during the filming for “The Red Line.” His sentencing didn’t change the story, but it meant precedent for the fictional officer to face repercussions for his actions.
Showrunners Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss, who have worked together for more than 15 years, created the series from their 2011 play “A Twist of Water.”
“We returned to those characters and that story that we loved so much,” Weiss told the Daily News. “The cultural conversation and sociopolitical conversation was different between 2011 and 2015 when we wrote the pilot and even more in 2019.”
Parrish and Weiss, both white, built diversity into the writers’ room and crew.
“From moment one, we made it a priority to listen,” Parrish told The News.
In the first two episodes provided to critics, “The Red Line” is a heartbreaking reminder that a story doesn’t end when someone dies or a trial ends. Family members are left reeling; police officers struggle to move on.
“The Red Line” looks at what happens next.
“I was so moved by the immensity of the tragedy,” Wyle, returning to network TV for the first time since “ER,” said. “I’m really attracted to characters who go along almost on autopilot and everything that defines them … is stripped away.”
Wyle’s Daniel grapples with his emotions while his daughter, Jira (Royale), looks for something to hold onto. She picks her birth mother.
“She’s trying so hard to get Daniel to understand,” Royale said. “She knows her upbringing and she’s thankful for it, but clearly there’s this whole universe she never knew about.”
Paul Evans, the white officer who shot and killed the innocent black man, searches for the truth of that night: Colleagues have repeatedly told him he did everything right. But that’s not what happened.
“It exists in the gray,” Fisher, known best for his role on “Shameless,” said. “From the moment that he understands what happens, he’s utterly devastated and questioning himself from that point on.”
“It’s so easy to ascribe a value judgment to something that you’re hearing the top level detail to,” Wyle told The News. “What we do and why we do things is infinitely more than that.” “The Red Line” premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBS.