This weekend, CBS will be taking its audience on a ride down Chicago’s Red Line in its appropriately titled series, The Red Line.
From the series’ press release:
The Red Line follows three Chicago families as they journey toward hope and healing after an unarmed African American doctor is shot by a white cop. The tragedy causes the families to consider how race and racial biases affect their lives.
The network recently dropped the series trailer at the top of the year.
In an exclusive clip for The Root, Tia Young (Emayatzy Corinealdi), a Chicago native with political dreams of her own visits the incumbent Alderman Nathan Gordon’s (Glynn Turman) home. Essentially, Tia, a mother and wife, is gunning for Alderman Gordon’s spot and hoping to shake up the city’s status quo.
“How does a girl with a masters in Economics end up married to public transit?” Alderman Gordon asks, incredulously.
In that simple question lies a loaded bundle of the classism wrapped up in the literal redlining practice visually displayed in Chicago’s South Side subway line. Gordon, who embodies the “talented tenth” historically dubbed by W.E.B. Du Bois, is so far removed from the ward he leads that he can’t fathom a black woman with an advanced degree returning to the neighborhood she “escaped” to marry a man she grew up with.
However, Tia elegantly tears down that classist thinking.
“I came back for my neighborhood,” Tia says, firmly. “I was just lucky he was still here.”
Along with Corinealdi and Turman, The Red Line stars Noah Wyle, Noel Fisher, Howard Charles, Aliyah Royale, Michael Patrick Thornton, Vinny Chhibber, and Elizabeth Laidlaw. Ava DuVernay, Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Caitlin Parrish, Sunil Nayar and Kevin Hooks serve as executive produce, with Erica Weiss as co-executive producer.
The Red Line will premiere Sunday, April 28 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. Each broadcast will include two-hour installments across four Sundays.