Chicago residents may get a glimpse of NBC's new cop drama, "Chicago PD," before it hits television sets this fall.
The show, a spin-off of firefighter drama "Chicago Fire" is filming scenes in Pilsen next week. Parking bans are in effect Sept. 10 from 11 p.m. and all day Sept. 11 around Ashland to Wood and 17th to 19th Streets, according to NBC Chicago.
DNAinfo Chicago reports casting directors want the show to look as authentic as possible and are casting "real" Chicago Police officers, EMTs, firefighters and armed forces and military personnel.
Earlier, WBEZ asked why would a "ratings-troubled series like Chicago Fire would get a spin-off before starting Season 2?" Co-creator Derek Haas told the Tribune in May the department presented a premise too good to pass up:
"Mike, Matt [Olmstead, executive producer] and I spent four days riding around with cops and detectives, and we got to see the inner workings of the police department, and it was like, why isn't this a show? The same way that we did it with the fire department, there's a show in what it means to be a policeman in Chicago. So that's what we're going for."
The hour-long drama from "Law & Order" and "Chicago Fire" producer Dick Wolf is described by the network as a "character-driven drama" that focuses on the lives of men and women serving in the Chicago Police Department's 21st District which covers the real-life area of roughly Chinatown to Hyde Park and east to the lake:
District 21 of the Chicago Police Department is made up of two distinctly different groups. There are the uniformed cops who patrol the beat and go head-to-head with the city's street crimes. And there's the Intelligence Unit, the team that combats the city's major offenses - organized crime, drug trafficking, high profile murders and beyond.
Hopefully "Chicago PD" will be more realistic than the ill-fated "Chicago Code" -- even if they are asking viewers to suspend disbelief. Case in point: We're supposed to buy this guy as a gritty Windy City copper:
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