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By Mark Robichaux
(HBO, Sunday, April 11, 10 p.m. ET)
It’s hard to describe New Orleans to someone who’s never been there.
Even some of the tourists who’ve survived a drunken revelry down Bourbon Street on Fat Tuesday can’t truly appreciate the depth of the city’s soul beyond the French Quarter. After Hurricane Katrina, it’s even harder to describe what the city is and was. Treme comes close.
The 10-episode, one-hour drama from HBO, written by executive producers David Simon (The Wire, Generation Kill) and Eric Overmyer (Homicide, The Wire), follows a cast of distinctive characters, mostly musicians, as they try to rebuild their lives after the 2005 flooding of the city. The series takes its title from the traditionally African-American New Orleans neighborhood Tremé (pronounced truh-may).
Fans expecting a version of The Wire set in New Orleans will be disappointed. Instead of focusing on crime or politics, the stories resonate with individual attempts to reassemble families, bands and lives amid one of the greatest man-made calamities to befall an American city.
The characters in Treme range from a Mardis Gras Indian chief to a local chef, and each offers a unique view on a city caked in mud and mold but definitely still alive. It is that gritty resilience that Treme celebrates, along with the rich cultural traditions that have nurtured natives there forever: food, music and family. The soundtrack is so good, it could outsell the DVD.
The cast is a gumbo of accomplished actors, musicians and actual New Orleans residents. One of the more appealing characters, played by Wire alumnus Wendell Pierce, is Antoine Batiste, a charming but chronically broke trombonist who runs from gig to gig to make ends meet. Khandi Alexander plays his sassy but sincere ex-wife, and John Goodman plays a local professor who embodies the residents’ rage at the government’s inadequate response.
If all this sounds like a downer, it’s not. Dialogue crackles, the plot is nuanced, and the accents are authentic. While critics may say Treme lacks the heat or intensity of The Wire, everybody knows that too much Tabasco ruins a good gumbo; what makes it appetizing is the fusion of so many flavors and spices.
(HBO, Sunday, April 11, 10 p.m. ET)
It’s hard to describe New Orleans to someone who’s never been there.
Even some of the tourists who’ve survived a drunken revelry down Bourbon Street on Fat Tuesday can’t truly appreciate the depth of the city’s soul beyond the French Quarter. After Hurricane Katrina, it’s even harder to describe what the city is and was. Treme comes close.
The 10-episode, one-hour drama from HBO, written by executive producers David Simon (The Wire, Generation Kill) and Eric Overmyer (Homicide, The Wire), follows a cast of distinctive characters, mostly musicians, as they try to rebuild their lives after the 2005 flooding of the city. The series takes its title from the traditionally African-American New Orleans neighborhood Tremé (pronounced truh-may).
Fans expecting a version of The Wire set in New Orleans will be disappointed. Instead of focusing on crime or politics, the stories resonate with individual attempts to reassemble families, bands and lives amid one of the greatest man-made calamities to befall an American city.
The characters in Treme range from a Mardis Gras Indian chief to a local chef, and each offers a unique view on a city caked in mud and mold but definitely still alive. It is that gritty resilience that Treme celebrates, along with the rich cultural traditions that have nurtured natives there forever: food, music and family. The soundtrack is so good, it could outsell the DVD.
The cast is a gumbo of accomplished actors, musicians and actual New Orleans residents. One of the more appealing characters, played by Wire alumnus Wendell Pierce, is Antoine Batiste, a charming but chronically broke trombonist who runs from gig to gig to make ends meet. Khandi Alexander plays his sassy but sincere ex-wife, and John Goodman plays a local professor who embodies the residents’ rage at the government’s inadequate response.
If all this sounds like a downer, it’s not. Dialogue crackles, the plot is nuanced, and the accents are authentic. While critics may say Treme lacks the heat or intensity of The Wire, everybody knows that too much Tabasco ruins a good gumbo; what makes it appetizing is the fusion of so many flavors and spices.
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