''City So Real'' is an American

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

miniseries directed by Steve James, revolving around the 2019 mayoral election in

Chicago, Illinois Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

, and the impact of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

and social upheaval following the

murder of George Floyd On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black American man, was murdered in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old White police officer. Floyd had been arrested after a store clerk reported that he made a purchase using a c ...

. It consists of 5 episodes and premiered on October 29, 2020, on

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...

Premise

The series follows the 2019 mayoral election in Chicago, exploring corruption within the city, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and social upheaval following the murder of George Floyd.

Episodes

Release

The series, originally just four episodes, had its world premiere at the

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival has acted ...

on January 27, 2020. In August 2020,

acquired distribution rights to the series.

Reception

Critical reception

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the series holds an approval rating of 100% based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 9.38/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the series has a weighted average score of 93 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Accolades

References

External links

* * * * {{Mayors of Chicago, state=collapsed 2020s American documentary television series 2020 American television series debuts American English-language television shows National Geographic (American TV channel) original programming Documentary television series about politics Works about Chicago Mayoral elections in Chicago Works about elections