The Chicago television franchise, also known as One Chicago, originated on NBC in 2012 with the debut of the procedural drama television series Chicago Fire, which eventually became NBC’s second-highest-rated drama series behind This Is Us. Chicago Fire was followed in 2014 by the first Chicago spin-off series, Chicago P.D., and then in 2015 by Chicago Med, which was renewed in March 2024 for a 10th season.
Following the successful debut of Chicago Med, the Chicago franchise, which presently averages approximately seven million viewers per episode for each of the franchise’s three shows, seemed poised to rival Chicago franchise producer Dick Wolf’s Law & Order franchise in terms of launching successful spin-off shows. However, unlike the Law & Order franchise, no Chicago series had been canceled prior to 2017.
In 2017, the fourth installment in the Chicago franchise, Chicago Justice, debuted on NBC. Chicago Justice, which originated as a 2016 backdoor pilot within the third season of Chicago P.D.
, follows the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office’s team of investigators and prosecutors, who must navigate Chicago politics, the legal arena, and the media while pursuing justice. However, despite its strong pedigree and various crossover connections with Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D., Chicago Justice only lasted 13 episodes and therefore became an outlier within the Chicago franchise as the first and thus far only Chicago series to fail.
