TRUTH IN FICTION
CBS’s ‘The Red Line’ confronts institutional racism in America
On Sunday, April 28, CBS premieres “The Red Line,” a drama that focuses on three Chicago families dealing with the consequences of a life-changing tragedy.
It may be the king of procedural law enforcement dramas, but CBS is breaking the mould and trying something new. “The Red Line” premieres Sunday, April 28, and the network knows this drama is something special. It’s being billed as an “event series,” and it has been scheduled in a unique format intended to offer audiences a propulsive viewing experience with a swift resolution. The drama focuses on the lives of three starkly dissimilar Chicago families as they deal with the consequences of an appalling, life-changing tragedy. It’s a bold, timely and potentially controversial show that wrestles with hot-button subjects such as institutional racism, police profiling and gun violence in American culture.
The cast of “The Red Line” is led by Noah Wyle, who returns to another fictionalized version of Chicago 10 years after his beloved “ER” character Dr. John Carter last saved lives at the fictional Chicago County General Hospital. Wyle plays Daniel Calder, a Chicago teacher whose husband, Harrison, a black doctor, is shot to death by a white police officer responding to a call. While out on a late-night errand, Harrison witnesses a convenience store robbery, and after the perpetrator departs, Harrison approaches the injured store clerk to render assistance. The police arrive moments later, and one of the responding officers, Paul Evans (played by Noel Fisher of Showtime’s “Shameless”), confuses Harrison for the suspect and opens fire without warning, killing him.
This act is the central tragedy around which the story of “The Red Line” revolves, and the series investigates the consequences of the killing not just for Daniel but for his adopted daughter, Jira (newcomer Aliyah Royale); for officer Evans and his ex-cop brother, Jim (Michael Patrick Thornton, “Private Practice”); and for Jira’s birth mother, Tia (Emayatzy Corinealdi, “Middle of Nowhere,” 2012), who is running for Chicago’s city council as a reform candidate.
The dual meaning of “The Red Line’s” title offers some insight into its scope and thematic goals. Superficially, a red line is often a metaphorical reference to an imaginary boundary not meant to be crossed, or a delimiter between what is and isn’t acceptable. The title also holds a subtler reference to Chicago’s Red Line, the busiest rapid transit line in the Chicago Transit Authority’s L system. One of only five American rapid transit systems that run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the 23-mile-long Red Line is a major artery in the Chicago metropolitan area and connects huge (and hugely diverse) areas of the city. Between those two references lies a tidy encapsulation of “The Red Line” as a show: a forbidden line is crossed, a violation occurs, and that event ends up connecting three families from very different socioeconomic, racial and cultural backgrounds who share the same urban living space.
“The Red Line’s” creative team includes executive producer Ava DuVernay (“Selma,” 2014), who has never shied away from confronting the issue of racism in America, and her new series fearlessly pursues that sensitive topic. The epidemic of shootings of unarmed black men by white people, frequently involving police officers, has been a headline-grabbing issue in recent years. Throughout the last decade, multiple high-profile cases have caught the attention of the media and the public.
In 2012, Florida teen Trayvon Martin was shot to death by a paranoid white man who suspected him of criminal intent. In 2014, Michael Brown of Ferguson, Mo., another black teenager, was fatally shot by a police officer who was pursuing him in response to a report of shoplifted cigars. In that same year, New Yorker Eric Garner died after an altercation with NYPD police officers who restrained him using a chokehold (an incident that was recorded on video by bystanders). In 2015, Walter Scott was shot to death in North Charleston, S.C., from behind as he fled from an arresting officer (yet another incident that was caught on camera).