A while back I called The Wire:

My favorite TV show ever.  It presents a vivid and believable world of Baltimore drugs, police, politics, etc. … I findThe Wire’s world unusually consistent with everything I know.  … “The overall moral of the story seems to me largely libertarian.

Though I was puzzled that its producer, David Simon, didn’t agree with me about its overall moral. If The Wire was the best show ever, then it was quite unlikely that Simon’s new show, Treme, would nearly as good. And after watching six episodes now, I can assure you it isn’t.  (Newsweek agrees). Oh its better than average, and I’m sure it is cutting-edge and ground-breaking in many ways.  And in terms of the details of personal lives, Treme may be even more realistic than The Wire.

But in terms of the larger social forces, Treme seems to be setting up a standard political fantasy: colorful warm-hearted salt-of-the-Earth plunky outranged citizens “take back their town” from corrupt leaders.  Oh they may well fail and get squashed in the end, but their idealism and passion toward their heart-warming noble cause is way way over the top.