The Red Line, on CBS
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This is an 8-episode series, with two episodes airing back-to-back on Sundays for four weeks. The executive producers include Ava DuVernay and Greg Berlanti. In the first episode, a black doctor named Harrison Brennan is shot and killed by a white cop named Paul Evans, who mistook him for the perpetrator of an armed robbery at a convenience store. The story then flashes forward six months, to the day on which it will be decided whether or not Officer Evans will face charges. And surprise, surprise: he won't.

Harrison is mourned by his husband, Daniel Calder (Noah Wyle), and their adopted daughter, Jira Calder-Brennan. Jira wants to meet her biological mother, believing she could empathize with her in a way Daniel can't, because he's white. Daniel is very reluctant to give his consent for this, because he believes Jira's mother didn't want her. But he eventually does agree, and asks the adoption agency to reach out to Jira's mother (whose identity he doesn't know). Also, Daniel is a teacher at the high school Jira attends, and they both receive moral support from another teacher there, named Liam Bhatt.

Meanwhile, the audience gets to see that Jira's mother is Tia Young, who is running for the office of alderman in Chicago's 6th ward, against an incumbent named Nathan Gordon, who has held the position for decades. She's conflicted about whether or not to meet Jira; she wants to, but also doesn't want to put Jira in the public spotlight in the midst of her campaign. Also, Tia is married to a man named Ethan, with whom she has a young son named Benny, and Ethan feels that Tia's current family should be enough for her.

We also get to see that Paul Evans seems to feel some guilt over what he did, but he's relieved that he'll get to continue in his job, despite public outrage over the shooting. He receives moral support from his partner, Victoria "Vic" Renna, although when she admits to him she had stolen a surveillance tape from the convenience store that could have shown his actions were inappropriate, he gets angry at her, and gets a new partner. However, the officer assigned to work with Paul, Diego Carranza, isn't happy about the assignment.

Well... in the second week of the series, Jira meets Tia. And Ethan becomes more supportive of his wife's attempts to get to know Jira. And there are some other characters we get to know a bit, over the course of the series. There's Paul's brother, Jim, a former cop whose career ended when being shot on the job had left him wheelchair-bound. And there's Tia's sister and campaign manager, Suzanne Davis. And Jira's best friends, Riley and Matthew. Riley is transgender, and characters casually call them "they," but their gender identity isn't a plot point at all. Riley has been Jira's best friend for a long time, apparently, and Matthew is a guy who starts spending time with the two of them in the course of the series. Both of them offer Jira support in all she's going through, but they're also always honest with her, even when it's not what she wants to hear. And Paul meets an EMT named Abby, whom he ends up dating for awhile. And there are various other characters I don't feel compelled to mention.

I also don't feel compelled to reveal much more of the plot, in any detail. I will say I liked Jira and Daniel and Tia and Liam and probably some other characters. I thought the show (and the actors) did a good job of portraying all of their struggles. What's most surprising to me was that the show apparently wanted the audience to sympathize with Paul, and I was skeptical of whether or not that was a good idea. Still, I did end up sympathizing with him somewhat, particularly because of learning a bit about what his family life was like, with an abusive father whom everyone revered as a great cop, whose legacy Paul could never hope to live up to. Obviously, one can't just forgive Paul for killing Harrison, but we also get to see that he's not just some one-sided monster. He honestly didn't believe he was racist at all, and I think he honestly felt terrible about what he'd done, even if he also didn't believe he deserved all the complications that arose in his life because of it. But the best part of his story arc comes at the very end of the series, when he has a sort of epiphany about himself, which leads to... an action that I'd say is the absolute least he could and should have done. I never got to the point of liking the character, but I can say that the soul-searching he does is something a hell of a lot more cops should do, as a bare minimum start towards fixing the system.

Other than that... there is a relatively happy ending for the Daniel, Jira, and Tia, and their friends. And the show ends on a generally hopeful note for the future, while not really glossing over how much work remains to be done in both Chicago and the country as a whole.