The best TV shows set in Chicago
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America's third largest city, Chicago, is a frequent setting for hit novels (Rebecca Makkai's "The Great Believers"), films ("High Fidelity") and television shows like Hulu's restaurant drama "The Bear." The critically acclaimed series, following a gourmet chef named Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) who inherits his family's Italian Beef restaurant business and tries to transform it into something bigger, returned in June for its third season. But viewers hungry for even more glimpses of the city's neighborhoods, restaurants and attractions should check out these three current shows — plus a few other all-time Windy City classics.
'Dark Matter' (2024)
The latest in a seemingly endless succession of expensive Apple TV+ science fiction epics, "Dark Matter" is the story of Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton), a shabby physics professor at fictional Lakemont College. One night he is abducted, taken to a warehouse and transported to an alternate universe, where he is a rich, famous scientist secretly building a box that puts people in "superposition" and can open doors to parallel universes. Desperate to get back to his wife Daniella (Jennifer Connelly) and son Charlie (Oakes Fegley) in his own world, Jason stumbles through countless versions of Chicago — some of them nuked, riddled with plague or worse — to find his way home. Despite a few inexplicable errors — the train tracks run underground in the Logan Square neighborhood where Jason and his family live, for example — the show includes scenes shot on location outside of the Loop, which is a rare pleasure indeed. (Apple TV+)
'Presumed Innocent' (2024)
The reimagining of forgotten films into edgy, well-regarded TV series seems to be a trend this year, from Netflix's "One Day" to Amazon Prime's "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Apple TV+ gets in the game with David E. Kelley's "Presumed Innocent," an adaptation of Chicago native Scott Turow's 1987 novel. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor whose mistress and colleague Carolyn (Renate Reinsve) is brutally murdered. Rusty unsurprisingly emerges as a prime suspect and tries to clear his name and repair his marriage to Barbara (Ruth Negga). Those old enough to remember the 1990 film adaptation starring Harrison Ford might not think this story deserves a second telling — but in the hands of Kelley ("Big Little Lies"), it is often quite gripping. (Apple TV+)
'The Chi' (2018-2024)
One of the few Chicago shows set on the city's historically neglected south side, Showtime's "The Chi" was recently renewed for a seventh season. The first season revolves around the murder of a teenager named Jason, whose body is discovered by the adolescent Coogie (Jahking Guillory), who decides to vandalize the corpse and is scooped up by the police. Believing Coogie to be the killer, Jason's grieving mom has her friend Ronnie (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) kill Coogie, a crime witnessed by Kevin (Alex Hibbert). The aperture then expands to include Coogie's older brother Brandon (Jason Mitchell), a cook at a bougie West Loop restaurant, who has to cope with his brother's death. Shot on location in places tourists rarely see and places the city's wealthier residents would prefer to ignore, "The Chi" is an engrossing and often devastating look at the cyclical nature of violence that also manages moments of hope and joy. (Paramount +)
Best of the past
If you're hungry for more Windy City-set television, don't sleep on these stellar series from the past few decades. "ER," the soapy '90s-era drama set in fictional County General Hospital, ran for 15 seasons and featured some exquisitely Chicago plotlines, including a mass casualty event when one of the city's ubiquitous wooden back porches collapses. "Easy," a Netflix anthology about polyamory, middle-aged malaise and parenthood, was created by mumblecore pioneer Joe Swanberg as a shot-on-location love letter to the city's north side neighborhoods. While it too often treated its Chicago setting perfunctorily, "The Good Wife" starred Julianna Margulies as an aggrieved housewife who gets revenge on her cheating husband by dusting off her JD and becoming a corporate lawyer at the white-shoe law firm Lockhart Gardner. And finally, the 11 seasons of "Shameless" are comedy gold, a Showtime series about a dysfunctional clan headed by a patriarch played by William H. Macy, set in the city's Back of the Yards neighborhood.
