Despite its dark turns, the series also trades in hope, and it’s instantly engaging on an emotional level. We’re not invited as tourist...
sfchronicle.com January 8, 2018 There is a lot of power and emotional depth here, all of which Waithe and her cast achieve without falling back on a doctrinaire moral code.
Television is waiting for a show that turns the South Side’s unique struggle into groundbreaking pop culture poetry, but The Chi will ha...
The most memorable characters in The Chi are not defined by the worst things that happen in their neighborhoods; these people, and these communitie...
Chicago Reader August 29, 2020 After two seasons of male-centered violence, this season challenges audiences to think of all the ways women, especially Black women, are affected...
Salon.com January 8, 2018 The Chi, Lena Waithe’s Showtime series … captures [its] truth more than any other Chicago-based series on television even as it grapples with...
New York Times April 8, 2019 Chemistry matters, and in Season 2 the formula’s off.
indieWire January 4, 2018 The Chi focuses primarily on the people who are accused of waging a "war on police." They’re not, and while the show isn’t necessa...
Slant Magazine January 6, 2018 The Chi ultimately appears unable to imagine Chicago’s South Side as anything but toxic.
The Guardian January 3, 2018 Handled poorly, the level of coincidence among the assorted characters could come off as hackneyed. Instead, it makes the series, and in particular...
USA Today January 4, 2018 … superb new drama…
There’s a wealth of acting talent being showcased on Showtime, and a number of performances that, as has been said about Chicago it...
RogerEbert.com January 5, 2018 A sometimes frustrating experience in that there’s a lot to like regarding ambition and ensemble, but the writing often strains to conne...
The Chi does not seem as philosophically devoted to tragedy as did The Wire. It seems possible that some of these characters are fated to survive...
This is a TV series that loves its characters and appreciates the environment they move through. It keeps surprising you with the connections...
But were you to remove the bodies and the bad guys from the story, there is enough individual life in these characters to make them worth knowing.
New Yorker January 22, 2018 All this plot leaves characters with so little downtime that they can only appear skeletally sketched.
New York Times January 4, 2018 What emerges as The Chi gets room to breathe is that, while it unfolds from a crime, it’s not really a crime story. It’s about a w...
New York Times April 3, 2018 There’s a serious imbalance between the plots.
If a drama series isn’t showing much forward momentum by the third episode these days, it’s tough to ask the audience to stick aro...
The joke, yet again, seems to rest on Maisha’s presumed undesirability or unattractiveness. I hope that The Chi won’t lean on this...
Bitch Media March 5, 2021 One of the most authentic onscreen depictions of Chicago.
The Ringer January 5, 2018 The Chi’s pilot is a strong opening salvo, and it accounts for most of my optimism that the show will eventually sort out what works fro...
Waithe has created a series that doesn’t provide a clear blueprint for its direction, which is part of what makes the show so bracing. T...
The Chi is all about despair wrapped in calamity. This may be an accurate read of these streets, but even tragedies need hope, however quixotic. Th...
Globe and Mail January 8, 2018 The anthology is alluring, given the source material, but very uneven.
New York Post July 17, 2020 "The Chi" continues its riveting storytelling in Season 3 - in spite of (or maybe due to?) the off-camera troubles that have plagued this...
Executive producer Phoebe Waller-Bridge subverts every male-centered trope of espionage thrillers as Eve and the assassin play a deadly cat-an...
Paste Magazine January 5, 2018 It serves as eloquent proof that the people who inhabit [Chicago] are much more than statistics. That there is a complex vitality to the city...
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