Thursday, Dec. 09, 2010
Treme, "Do You Know What It Means" (Pilot)
David Simon's paean to post-Katrina New Orleans was so devoted to realism and to the city's laid-back, improvisational-jazz spirit that its first season suffered some slack passages in the middle. But Treme's high points, like its feature-length pilot, were jazz poetry — less a structured TV drama than a fictionalized documentary about art and getting by. Director Agnieszka Holland made this pilot into a minifilm that captured the series' romantic theme, which is the love of impractical things — be they music, a house in a flood zone or this city of pleasure and dreams itself. (HBO)