Treme - the biggest thing on HBO since The Wire

The most eagerly anticipated TV series for years opened last night on HBO in the States - and everywhere the question is the same: can Treme, set in New Orleans, be as good as the last series made by the same team, the epic Baltimore cop show, The Wire? The answer is yes, probably. Maybe even better.

The first thing to get out of the way is how to pronounce the title: it's tray-may as in the working class neighbourhood of New Orleans where the series is largely set. (And for those eager to be seen to be in the loop, always remember, it's N'awlins, not New Orleans.)

The second thing to say is that anyone hoping to see bodies piling up, cops fighting drug dealers and city hall conspiracies - as in The Wire - will be disappointed. This is a softer more meandering affair.

That said, the use of intertwining story lines, peopled by rich characters from the street, which helped make The Wire's creator and producer David Simon the most wanted man in television, is again employed to terrific effect.

The setting is New Orleans three months after Katrina where a cast of characters are emerging from the hurricane to re-evaluate their lives and start rebuilding their city.

Wendell Pierce (above), one of the actors to come over from The Wire, where he played Detective Bunk Moreland, plays trombonist Antoine Batiste. Khandi Alexander, a graduate of CSI Miami, plays Antoine's ex, LaDonna, a bar owner searching for her brother, lost in the hurricane.

John Goodman, veteran of Roseanne, plays an angry university professor who, on being asked by a visiting British journalist if New Orleans is worth rebuilding, tries to fling his TV camera in the Mississippi River.

But all are agreed that the real star of Treme is the soulful city itself
- and, of course, its jazz, which suffuses every scene.

WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:
 
Mary McNamara, the Los Angeles Times: "Not so much a television show as a modern American opera, full of flop sweat, spectacle and something that looks suspiciously like hope."

Hank Stuever, the Washington Post: "Treme has the potential to be better than The Wire. It's suffused with characters and an amazingly crafted musical and ethereal texture that is as lovely and depressing as New Orleans itself. The pain and joy it portrays are as beautiful as the faded, peeling paint and floodline watermarks on which the camera tenderly lingers."
 
Nancy Franklin, the New Yorker: "The series virtually prohibits you from loving it, while asking you to value it. In that sense, I suppose, it may be the bravest show that David Simon has ever made."
 
Randee Dawn, Hollywood Reporter: "For now, it might echo a bit strongly of The Wire, and that's fine; both series are about fighting entrenched systems and all forms of bureaucracy, and both have a darkly comic sense of humor. But Treme is about building up, not tearing down."
 
Alessandra Stanley, the New York Times: "The series turns almost didactic at times, but for a reason. Treme is a work of imagination that seeks to reacquaint the world with a struggling city's reality."
 
There is no news yet on who will show 'Treme' in the UK - or when. ·