He goes deep with the long, thorough piece, examining how and why Simon seems to be getting everything right with the series, which focuses on musicians and others in the titular New Orleans neighborhood and greater NOLA, circa the days and months following Katrina.
What's the upshot of Treme?
Blumenfeld nails it here: For jazz fans, it provides the most significant television profile since Ken Burns's Jazz series (and this time focused on living musicians playing material that moves beyond a late-1960s aesthetic). Inside New Orleans, there's a specific sort of raised expectation: that Simon and company will get things right; that they will surely sidestep the tone-deaf caricature offered by, say, 2007s ill-fated Fox series K-Ville; that in crafting a series about The City That Care Forgot, they care.
I'll shortly take a look at the first few episodes of Treme, and I'll post my thoughts in this space.
Alex Rawls wrote a thoughtful piece on Treme for NOLA music mag Offbeat. And the Entertainment Weekly review of the show is here.
