By Fred Topel The Chicago Code is making a new mark on the legacy of television cop shows. Fox’s Monday night drama shows Chicago Police Superintendent Teresa Colvin (Jennifer Beals) and Det. Jaek Wysocki (Jason Clarke) fighting the corruption of city Alderman Ronin Gibbons (Delroy Lindo.) In a conference call with the media, series creator Shawn Ryan discussed the new show and how it differs from his previous cop show, The Shield. Explaining What an alderman is: “I’ve always been interested in Aldermen. I grew up in Rockford which has a similar political system as Chicago in that they have Aldermen. I have an uncle who was an alderman in Rockford. So I was always interested in that position. As I did my research for the show, obviously everyone knows about the mayor of Chicago and the history of Chicago’s mayors, but less is known nationally about the alderman system and the ward system in Chicago. Listen, if you have a couple cops who are trying to stamp out corruption in Chicago, you’ve got to have a pretty good example of that to motivate the series.” They control the Chicago trains: “From the very beginning we talked at great length with the Illinois Film Commission and with the Chicago City Officials about filming there and they were incredibly cooperative and really promised us a lot of assistance and really came through, not just on the first few episodes, really the whole series. They wanted to make Chicago an inviting place to film and they really did. I have only great things to say about the city and the state in terms of being a great place to film. That was just one example, not only that we got to use the train but that we were able to control a little bit when trains came and when they left from the station. It just adds a huge element to the show that you don’t tend to see in cities like New York and Los Angeles that are filmed constantly. We were invited in by that city in a pretty spectacular way.” They dramatize the historical evidence of real corruption: “I think you just start approaching it from a character perspective. Like anything on a TV show, there are plenty of History Channel and documentary channel stuff that people can watch for the pure basic information of it. If you’re going to make it interesting and make it [...]
