Thursday, July 25, 2019

Your Next Summer Must-Watch: South Side

Looking to draw the shades, crank up the AC, and binge a new comedy series? Laura Bradley recommends South Side, a raucous survey of a much-maligned Chicago neighborhood premiering on Comedy Central tonight. South Side native Bashir Salahuddin and Diallo Riddle (who’s from Atlanta) decided to center their show on the employees at a furniture store called Rent-T-Own for strategic reasons: “We realized it was the perfect vehicle because it allows you, through them dropping off appliances or picking up furniture or whatever they’re doing, to use the entire city of Chicago as the set,” Salahuddin explained. “It allows us to kind of go all over the city, because we really wanted to have the city of Chicago speak for itself”—especially at a time when Chicago, and the South Side specifically, have often been portrayed by the media as dangerous and violent. (President Donald Trump went so far as to call the city a “war zone” in a 2017 interview.) South Side’s Chicago has its issues—but it’s also a vibrant place suffused with hustling dreamers. “I remember the guys in high school who sold candy,” Salahuddin said. “I mean, they made way more money than the drug dealers did.... If you wanted Reese’s before third period, ‘I got you…’ I think the fact that you could have so many hustles that don’t hurt anybody, that aren’t criminal, and that really just try to help people get a leg up in your society—that, for me, feels like we’re tapped right into the DNA of one of the things that makes the city special.”
Elsewhere in HWD, Julie Miller digs into the real-life royal visit that inspired the plot of the new Downton Abbeymovie; a queer contestant takes the Bachelor-verse by storm; Lifetime announces plans for a new docuseries that should probably make Jeffrey Epstein nervous; and Jon Stewart finally wins his battle against Congress to get a 9/11 first responders bill passed.