One Chicago’s Near-Perfect Series Is Finally Available To Binge on Netflix

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Tracy Spiridakos, Jesse Lee Soffer, LaRoyce Hawkins, Marina Squericiati in Chicago P.D. Image via NBC

Published Aug 1, 2026, 5:10 PM EDT

Lloyd 'Happy Trails' Farley: the man, the myth, the legend. What can be said about this amazing - and humble - man that hasn't been said before? Or, more accurately, what can be said in public? Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Lloyd is a master of puns and a humorist, who has authored one pun book to date - Pun and Grimeish Mint - and is working on a second. His time with Collider has allowed Lloyd's passion for writing to explode, with nearly 1,000 articles to his name that have been published on the site, with his favorite articles being the ones that allow for his sense of humor to shine. Lloyd also holds fast to the belief that all of life's problems can be answered by The SimpsonsStar Wars, and/or The Lion King. You can read more about Lloyd on his website, or follow his Facebook page and join the Llama Llegion. Happy trails!

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Arguably, the success — or at least a large part of it — of NBC's One Chicago franchise hinges on the fact that it has a little something for all tastes. Chicago Med has that prime-time soap feel about it, while Chicago Fire strikes a good balance between serious fare and lighthearted storylines, as it does in Season 10 episode "Last Chance," which offsets the high tension with a storyline where Mouch (Christian Stolte) goes full-CSI in trying to find out who "murdered" his beloved couch. But for those who like intense, high-stakes drama, Chicago P.D. is the one for you. And for international fans, it's now on Netflix, ready to stream.

'Chicago P.D.' Succeeds as a Case-of-the-Week Police Procedural

With thirteen seasons in its holster — and a fourteenth premiering with the other One Chicago shows on October 7th — there's a lot of history behind the Intelligence Unit of Chicago's 21st District. But one doesn't need to know that history to enjoy Chicago P.D.: it stands on its own as a case-of-the-week procedural. Once the case has been set up, these episodes go into high gear, with an unrelenting, yet intoxicating, tension that doesn't give up until the case comes to an end. Those cases run the gamut, from investigating a drug-smuggling operation in "A Night Owl" to the routine domestic disturbance call that escalates to expose a multi-state sex trafficking ring in "I Was Here."

Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey's Anatomy · House · Scrubs

Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.

🚨The Pitt

🏥ER

💉Grey's

🔬House

🩺Scrubs

FIND YOUR HOSPITAL →

01

A critical patient comes through the door. What's your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.

AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what's the thing that doesn't fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you'd give in an interview.

ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone's life is actually on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn't know what else to do with my life.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.

ACompetence and calm — I need people who don't fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it's handled. CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me. EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who's worked a long shift has had to answer this question.

AI carry it. All of it. I don't look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly. BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don't think you're supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed. EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.

AIntense and completely present — no small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic — brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and easy to like.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.

AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can't provide. BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it. CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems. DRules are for people who haven't thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What's yours?

AEverything outside these walls — I've given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it. BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I've made a complicated peace with that. CStability — my personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that's not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships — I am not easy to know, and the people who've tried to would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity — I use humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.

AThe fact that it's real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I'd do it again. DThe next unsolved case — there's always another puzzle, and I'm not done yet. EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job.

REVEAL MY HOSPITAL →

Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…

Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.

The Pitt

You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn't let you look away.

  • You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
  • You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
  • You've made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
  • Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.

ER

You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.

  • You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
  • You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
  • You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
  • ER is television about endurance. You have it.

Grey's Anatomy

You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.

  • You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
  • Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
  • You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
  • It's messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.

House

You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn't fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.

  • You're not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you'd deny it.
  • You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
  • Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they're smart enough to keep up.
  • The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.

Scrubs

You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.

  • You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
  • You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that's not a flaw, it's a survival strategy.
  • You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
  • Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

And Chicago P.D. doesn't buy into audience-pleasing ends that betray the story, a refreshingly rare series that ends in tragedy as much as success, where even the successes don't always feel that way. As such, there's a large degree of truthfulness within Chicago P.D. Storylines are gritty and real, like the neighborhoods of the city that the series is set in. Yes, there are those elements that require a suspension of disbelief, the same ones that are typical of the genre (cases wrapped up within the hour, the clue that shows up at the last moment, or the captain that keeps his job in spite of a lengthy list of sins), but there's enough honesty to earn goodwill in spite of it. Included in that is a distinctive moral grayness within the series that feels more real than the idea of white hats versus black hats.

'Chicago P.D.'s Overarching Storylines Shouldn't Be Missed

You don't necessarily need to know the show's history to enjoy Chicago P.D., that remains true. But those who choose to watch from the start are rewarded with a rich series of overarching storylines, arcs populated with a host of strong characters, an eclectic bunch that largely stay clear of the genre's tropes. Jason Beghe's Hank Voight is a particularly fascinating case in point. He began his One Chicago tenure in Chicago Fire's Season 1 episode "Professional Courtesy," and all one really has to know about that is he was a dirty cop who went to jail for six months: you are now officially caught up. As Chicago P.D. begins, he has been released from prison and promoted to Sergeant of the Intelligence Unit.

Voight was a villain, but now he's almost something worse: a villain with the belief that his way is the only way to see justice done, and that way is not always, shall we say, in line with the CPD's Code of Ethics. Only he's far more complicated than even that, and while his arc contains moments of vigilante vengeance and violent revenge, it also shows many moments that show he is, at heart, a good man. The times that he crossed the line with the greatest of intentions, to protect children and vulnerable victims. Taking in Erin Lindsay (Sophia Bush) as a teenage runaway, treating her like a daughter and eventually seeing her join the Intelligence Unit.

The morally gray area he lives in has seen him come at odds with his own team, in particular Antonio Dawson (Jon Seda), whose moral integrity is often in direct conflict with his, another storyline that came to an end with Seda's departure at the end of Season 6. And there's many, many more storylines over the course of the series that have captivated viewers for thirteen seasons: the hopeful arc of Nadia Decotis (Stella Maeve) that came to a tragic end; the slow-building relationship between Burgess (Marina Squerciati) and Ruzek (Patrick Flueger) that results in the official union of Burzek; the on-again, off-again, on-again, really off-again and maybe, just maybe, on-again relationship between Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) and Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos).

If you've never seen Chicago P.D., it's well worth turning on Netflix for a binge if you're outside the U.S. But don't worry, American friends: Peacock has the series ready and waiting for you right there.

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Release Date January 8, 2014

Showrunner Derek Haas

Directors Nick Gomez, Eriq La Salle, Carl Seaton, Fred Berner, Vincent Misiano, Bethany Rooney, Rohn Schmidt, Sanford Bookstaver, John Hyams, Nicole Rubio, Terry Miller, Takashi Doscher, Brenna Malloy, Lisa Robinson, Marc Roskin, Charles S. Carroll, David Rodriguez, Holly Dale, John Polson, Lin Oeding, Mykelti Williamson, Paul McCrane, Alik Sakharov, Charlotte Brändström

Writers Craig Gore, Tim Walsh, Timothy J. Sexton, Mike Weiss, Mo Masi, Tiller Russell, Eduardo Javier Canto, Jamie Pachino, Mike Batistick, Cole Maliska, John Dove, Tiffany Bratcher, David Hoselton, Maisha Closson, Kim Rome, Katherine Visconti, Daniel Arkin, Todd Robinson, David Rambo, Denitria Harris-Lawrence, Mick Betancourt, Bryan Gracia

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    Marina Squerciati

    Kim Burgess

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