WTTW's new "Chicago Stories" gives us Blago, blizzards and Frangos

The first of the new five-show batch of WTTW-Ch. 11’s documentary series “Chicago Stories” arrives this weekend and continues to premiere new episodes at 8 p.m. Fridays through Oct. 24. Each show comes with what WTTW calls a “companion microsite,” which gives you more, more, more.

Also, the shows will be shown again and again after their initial airings, and will also be available forever, I suppose, on the station’s website. I know this because I am hearing from people who have just watched last year’s “Chicago Stories” trip to “Amusement Parks,” in which I was interviewed about my memories of Riverview, the long-gone North Side amusement paradise.

Each of the “Chicago Stories” programs is solidly produced, alive with vintage photos and video, featuring the talking heads that are the necessary element of such programs, most of them well-informed. You will hear the narrator, Chicago-based actor Anthony Fleming III, voice a few cringeworthy cliches, but you’ll also be entertained and in some cases even enlightened.

And so, with the weather still relatively gentle and warm, you can revisit some of the coldest and snowiest days in the city’s history, circa 1967 and 1979. “Legendary Blizzards” (Sept. 26) does a fine job of evoking the nasty, and deadly, blizzards that hit and paralyzed the city in January of those two years. Old photos and video capture what a mess it was and the show highlights what a 1979 political disaster it was for then-Mayor Michael Bilandic, whose ham-handed handling of the snowfall helped elect the city’s first female mayor, Jane Byrne.

Producer Eddie Griffin gives us a lovely bit about a now-adult “blizzard baby,” some fine memories from Bill Kurtis and Tom Skilling, and my Tribune colleagues Kori Rumore Finley and Marianne Mather, simply and typically smart and delightful. So evocative is this program that you might find yourself hitting pause and digging out your old down jacket.

Next up is inside the “Tylenol Murders” (Oct. 3), focusing on the 1982 deaths of seven people who died after taking the medication tainted with cyanide while on drug store shelves. This crime has previously been the subject of stories, books and a spectacular 2022 podcast series, “Unsealed: The Tylenol Murders” in 2022, a collaboration between the Tribune and Brooklyn-based At Will Media that featured Tribune reporters Christy Gutowski and Stacy St. Clair.

Those who might have forgotten or never known the details will encounter or meet again one of the weirdest characters in local crime annals, an accountant named James Lewis. He was convicted of trying to extort the drug’s manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, but was never tied to the poisonings. He will give you the creeps. Credit to producer Peter Marks for interviewing Kasia Novak-Janus, whose father, Adam, was a victim. Though only 4 years old at the time, she now provides a potent emotional punctuation mark to the story.

The star of “Rod Blagojevich” (Oct.10) is, as you might expect, Rod Blagojevich and producer Tania Lindsay shows us the man from childhood through his meteoric political rise, remindeds us of his charismatic ways, details what got him into legal trouble as governor and landed him in prison for eight years, until President Trump (with whom he had shared “Celebrity Apprentice” TV screens in 2010) commutes his 14-year sentence in 2020 and allowed his return to Chicago, his wife Patti and their two daughters.

Commenting along the way are the very frank former deputy governor Bradley Tusk, very insightful former reporter Andy Shaw, his loyal lawyer Len Goodman and, well, more Rod. You can judge for yourself if he got a raw deal (political consultant Delmarie Cobb tells you he did), and Rod doing his best Elvis on a street fair stage and saying, “I believe I was the best governor in modern history.” You’ll also hear his voice on some of the notorious recordings, as in “I’ve got this thing and it’s (expletive) golden.” His hair is naturally mentioned but his barber is not interviewed and that would have been (he’s my barber too and a friend) a lively addition.

“Iconic Foods” (Oct. 17) is, frankly, a feast. Pizza, beef sandwiches, tamales, hot dogs, steaks, tortas, Giardiniera rib tips and hot links, gyros … And there’s more, covered in rapid-fire fashion, a hunger-inducing visual style. Produced by Dan Andries and written by him and former Tribune reporter and food expert Monica Eng (who is frequently and charmingly on camera, exhibiting her vast knowledge of the food scene), the show does make a solid case for Chicago’s stature as a culinary Mecca.

Chefs, restaurateurs, food writers and historians dig deep into our food history and tend to be a bit boosterish. But I was happy to see Ric Riccardo recognized as the creator of that Chicago (jewel or disaster, depending on your taste), deep dish pizza.

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This season’s finale, “Marshall Field” (Oct. 23), hits very close to home. Not only do I refuse to refer to the store as Macy’s, which it has been corporately called since 2006, I have shopped and eaten there thousands of times, and my father, Herman Kogan, along with his colleague Lloyd Wendt, wrote a definitive history in 1952, “Give the Lady What She Wants,” its latest 2020 edition featuring an introduction by me.

I know the history inside and out but still enjoyed this trip back to the store’s founding and its wildly innovative creator, Marshall Field. Author, historian and lecturer Leslie Goddard does most of the talking, her performance skills on full display, but she is joined by former employees, a couple of historians and a spectacular stream of photos. Though the program does touch on some unfortunate racial and union troubles, producer Heidi Zersen provides a generally celebratory journey. Have some Frango mints and enjoy.

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