By Dave Shiflett (Bloomberg) – The characters in David Simon’s new series pack a different sort of heat than the gang-bangers from Baltimore (“The Wire”) or soldiers invading Iraq (“Generation Kill”). In “Treme,” which debuts on HBO April 11 at 10 p.m. New York time, the weapon of choice is the trombone or trumpet. Nobody gets it between the eyes in the premier of the New-Orleans based series, though many get their ears massaged. The ten-part series, co-created and produced by Eric Overmyer, commences three months after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005 and is set in Treme, a neighborhood near the French Quarter where some believe jazz was born. Jazz is very much alive and kicking in the premier, which starts out with musicians haggling over money – a process predating jazz by several eons. Once they get underway we see the hurricane did no harm to the spirit of city residents, who dance on car tops as the parade winds past abandoned appliances and devastated houses. The series follows the lives of several residents who are trying to make life work in the wake of the flooding, including Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce), a trombone player with a big sound and an empty wallet. Every cab ride involves a haggle, though when he cuts lose his horn can part the clouds. Ex-wife LaDonna Batiste-Williams (Khandi Alexander) owns a bar where she dispenses beer and urges Antoine to go visit their kids, who have been relocated to Baton Rouge. She’s also searching for brother Daymo, who disappeared during the storm. Her chief ally is Toni Bernette (Melissa Leo), a tenacious civil rights attorney who’s married to one of the series’ two major blowhards. Husband Creighton (John Goodman) is an English professor fond of trumpeting his belief that the flooding was a man made disaster decades in the making. He’s a big guy who clearly never met a sausage or crawfish he didn’t eat. No wonder he takes offense when a British journalist, interviewing him on camera, opines that New Orleans food is provincial. Creighton responds by calling him a “limey vulture” and throws his microphone in a canal. He’s much more endearing than Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn) a DJ and sometime musician who is self-consciously hip to a terminal degree. You may find yourself wishing a gang-banger from “The Wire” would make a cameo appearance and whack him. No luck there, though there is a cameo by Elvis Costello, who visits a club to listen to music. Viewers will likely find themselves quickly rooting for most of the characters, perhaps especially Albert Lambreaux (Clarke Peters), an older musician who’s also a Mardi Gras Indian chief. He’s lost everything, but when he dons his ceremonial feathers we know we’re in the presence of an authentic Phoenix. Rounding out the cast is Lambreaux’s son Delmond (Rob Brown), a rising trumpeter who’s blowing licks at the Blue Note in Manhattan when we meet him. Series babe is Janette Desautel (Kim Dickens), a chef with a philosophical bent who proclaims “It’s oyster season -- how bad can life be?” For some reason she’s a sometime girlfriend of McAlary’s. Maybe she’ll wise up and feed him a few bad ones. Some viewers may find this a salty-tongued bunch and temperance types will quickly note that whoever holds the Budweiser concession in Treme must be a billionaire. It’s the rare hand that isn’t wrapped around a Bud, and the sipping sometimes commences just after hopping out of bed in the morning. Yet all told, this is an affirmation of human tenacity and perseverance in the wake of disaster. The premier ends on a perfect note. Antoine has snared a last minute funeral gig. “Forty to the graveyard,” he says, and another $40 back. “Play for that money boys,” he says as they break into “A Little Closer Walk With Thee.” As they saunter past the graves you half expect the departed to leap up and join the procession. Simon has another hit on his hands, without hit men.
