Lower voltage Wire

Most television can be watched while washing the dishes. Not this time. It’s New Orleans, three months after Hurricane Katrina. We see lips working a reed, fingers fussing on a saxophone.

“Shit ain’t right.”

“Should be ten.”

“Price was twelve bro.”

“Say bro if twelve hundred for eight pieces, and you said you was going to have Shorty kicking it with you.”

Say what? Eventually we understand these are musicians negotiating their rate. In the first minutes of his new series, Treme, David Simon, creator of The Wire, tells us we had better pay attention.

The band breaks into a 1980s funk tune and then our hero shows up. Hurrah! Bunk is back. No longer a dapper detective, New Orleans-born Wendell Pierce plays Antoine Batiste, an itinerant trombonist and inveterate womaniser doing his best to support his family. Clarke Peters, who played Lester Freamon in The Wire, also returns, as a Mardi Gras Indian chief.

Like The Wire, Treme (pronounced tre-MAY, which starts on new HD channel Sky Atlantic on 18 February), is an ensemble production, interweaving different stories. The writing remains authentic and moving, the acting subtle and skilled. But after creating what may be the best 60 hours of television ever made, Simon has set himself an even tougher task in Treme.

The Wire, for all its brilliant structure, was still a cop show. Treme is about artists: musicians mostly, but also a chef, a novelist, and men who sew feathers on intricate Mardi Gras costumes. That is the first difficulty: cops and drug dealers provide more dramatic story arcs than horn players.

Treme is named after a neighbourhood in New Orleans. This setting is another obstacle. The Wire told the story of Simon’s hometown of Baltimore. I’ve barely been to Baltimore, but no matter. The city stands for the decaying hulk of our post-manufacturing economy. If you care about Liverpool or Glasgow or Newark or New Haven or Detroit you will be moved by Simon’s Baltimore. Treme is about New Orleans and the Louisiana city is sui generis. Although Venice, Havana and Zanzibar’s Stone Town capture similar vibes, New Orleans represents nowhere else.

Early in the first episode, a BBC reporter interviews John Goodman, playing Tulane professor Creighton Bernette. The journalist insults the city, calls the food provincial, the music passé. He says New Orleans is well past its sell-by date.

Goodman explodes, “Provincial, passé, hate the food, hate the music, hate the city, what the fuck you doing down here you fucking limey vulture motherfucker?” Back in April, when the show premiered in New Orleans, that scene made locals whoop and cheer. But for an English audience the question is apt. Simon cares about New Orleans, but why should you?

I care. I love New Orleans, the music, the food, its attitude to the pleasures of the flesh, but mostly I love the way it doesn’t give a damn about anywhere else. In a world in which we aspire to be global citizens, New Orleanians are deeply, proudly provincial. In Denver or Omaha, the ambitious dream of moving to New York or LA. In New Orleans, they maybe think of moving Uptown. They know that despite the crime, the heat, the poverty, they live in the centre of the universe. In New Orleans, Irma Thomas is bigger than Madonna.

The city has been in decline for 150 years and doesn’t fret. In a later episode, one of the protagonists asks, “Would you rather have a strong economy or a four-hour lunch?” Sexy, stupid, beautiful, mysterious New Orleans is no friend of the modern world. Its culture is its own—maybe that’s why Simon needs to tell its story.

No, Treme isn’t as good as The Wire. It isn’t as big, as profound or as compelling. But any television drama Simon makes is worth watching. In The Wire he explored a universal story of corruption and decline. In Treme, he describes a place he loves and tells us why we too should care.