HBO show about post-Katrina is timely and profound

The HBO series, Treme, wrapped up its debut season last week. The series is about post-Katrina New Orleans, particularly the Treme section of the city, and has been renewed for a second season. That's good news for people who appreciate quality television dramas with something smart and meaningful to say about life, death and everything in between.

The series had a lot of texture. Producers cast known and not-so-known musicians for various roles. Treme is almost as much about music as it is the struggles of New Orleans. But make no mistake about it, Treme gets up close and personal in developing all characters and story lines. It goes well beyond the music. While some folks triumph over the odds, others face a more tragic end. The character played by John Goodman, a writer who couldn't cope with losing the essence of his beloved city, was particularly profound.

In the middle are all the people with uncertain futures. They tend to deal with their lives one day at a time. Some leave the city, some stay. A few regain some sense of normalcy, while others don't. The fictionalized stories are both moving and educational. There are aspects of post-Katrina life in New Orleans that I had never thought about until watching Treme. And I'm a guy who read a lot of news accounts of the real-life events before, during and after the hurricane while I was working at USA Today.

It wouldn't surprise me if in five or 10 years, HBO does a post-BP oil spill series. There are certain stories that can't quite be told through the national news media. Journalists are good at getting the daily news and sometimes digging deeper and presenting well-formed analysis or human interest pieces. But events on the scale of Katrina, and now the BP oil spill, are rich with numerous angles and ripe story-telling perspectives -- positives, negatives and everything in between. Sometimes "creative non-fiction" is the best vehicle to convey certain hardships and challenges.

Treme was the right show at the right time. With the oil still flowing, and more lives being destroyed so soon after Katrina, one can't help but wonder how people along the Gulf Coast can endure this latest onslaught. While one disaster was man-made and the other was caused by a force of nature, in the end, it doesn't really matter why or how the catastrophes arrived if you're a resident of that part of the world.