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On the occasion of the premiere, Simon, a slow, thoughtful talker, spoke to me about "Treme," his allergy to melodrama, what he makes of most television, and "The Wire" spinoff he wanted to make.

Do you feel like the characters in “Treme” have a capacity for happiness, that maybe the characters on “The Wire” didn't?

They are not quite under as much pressure, I would say. These are not people who are standing on a drug corner with a gun. We very purposefully made a story about post-Katrina New Orleans that utilized ordinary people as characters. Musicians, cooks, a lawyer, a cop, but not people who are engaged in life on a continuously heightened basis. And that was purposeful and we thought that was the best way to tell this particular story. That has its own benefits and it also has its costs. But it’s a choice. If you take ordinary characters, sometimes you’ll end up with ordinary life rather than something hyperbolic and hyper-dramatic. I think there’s a lot of comedy and tragedy and everything in between on display in “Treme.” Happiness? Yeah, maybe.

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It reminds me very much of my eighth-grade teacher who so desperately hoped to be the mythic sage who made a difference, but failed to realize his well-meaning musings about why “black families can’t stay together these days” did little to raise our awareness of anything other than his own desire to seem good. And this is what "Parenthood" does in its broad-stroke coverage of everything that could happen in the life of a modern American family. Since we're all terrified of being different, there is some point in airing things we might still regard with shame: infidelity, moving back with your parents, not going to college, raising an autistic child, and, finally, interracial dating. As the end product of an interracial date, I find this last theme most interesting. On the show, it’s explored in two story lines.

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But I asked again, promising that this wouldn't be a nit-picky discussion of plot and character, but hopefully an interview that talked about larger issues: the style and architecture of the show, its storytelling philosophy, its view of art and culture, and the ways in which it is similar to or different from Simon's previous series, "The Wire," "The Corner" and "Generation Kill." And he said yes. The conversation ranged over nearly two hours. Excerpts follow.

Salon: What sort of philosophy -- or what sort of messages, if any -- are you trying to convey on "Treme," about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina? And how do you respond to critics who have contended that this series, like "The Wire" before it, conveys a pessimistic vision of city life, and the United States generally? Especially season two of "Treme," which was dominated by crime, the threat of random violence, and local government's culture of corruption and indifference to individual suffering?

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The opening scene of last night's "Treme" showcased the HBO drama at its finest -- and most frustrating. A group of musicians gathered to remember Steve Earle's character, Harley, the street troubadour and mentor to Annie (Lucia Micarelli) who was slain last week after a robbery. As directed by Agnieszka Holland and written by series co-creater Eric Overmyer, the moment was "Treme" at its finest. Like the films of Robert Altman ("Short Cuts") -- a director the "Treme" team often invokes -- it brought major and minor characters together in a gathering to honor an ideal as well as a person. A few characters spoke briefly and tenderly about their late friend and launched into a spontaneous, heartbreaking version of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." And then came the moment we were waiting for: Poor Annie, who had flowered under Harley's attention, raised her fiddle and started to play.

And then ...

The episode cut away to the opening credits.

Aaarghhhh!

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Which is all very exciting. I love "American Gods" and "The Sandman" series, and have always wondered why the latter seems to be the one graphic novel that never gets a film adaptation like Frank Miller's or Alan Moore's do. Maybe it's because Gaiman's stories are sprawling epics, a much better fit for television than the big screen, where character traits and subplots would have to be boiled down to their coarsest elements in order to keep the pace of the story going.

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To say that "Treme" gets all this would be an understatement. In fact, the creative process is often the glue holding the show's other disparate elements together.  The most recent episode, "Feels Like Rain," moved this element into the foreground to such a degree that it practically subsumed everything else. It showed the similar thought processes that connect chefs and musicians, and then went further, illustrating how all of life is a creative act, one that's ultimately about creating newness and joy (if we're lucky) and connecting the lessons (and creative achievements) of the past to the present. I was struck by how many of Janette Desautel's lines echoed conversations occurring among the show's many musicians, and how Albert Lambreaux's discussions of sewing mirrored his son Delmond's struggles this season with finding his own voice as a jazz man, a composer-performer trying to reconcile a modern sound with his New Orleans roots. There was a sense that it was all connected, all of a piece. "Treme" always insists on this, of course, but "Feels Like Rain" (written by Tom Piazza and series co-creator Eric Ovrermyer, and directed by Roxann Dawson) put a spotlight on it.

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Titled "Slip Away" (after a number performed by Antoine's new band), the episode began and ended with signature "Treme" setpieces -- public gatherings that evolved into a live musical performances. The first was a memorial service (for Dinerral) that segued into a musical procession, then fell silent as all the musicians stopped playing and held their instruments aloft in salute. The second was a march to "End the Violence" in storm shattered, crime addled New Orleans. It began with a shot of a bicycle -- the possession of a former murder victim, briefly glimpsed earlier scenes, and accumulating flowers and candles. Then it jumped from location to location, showing groups of marchers in different neighborhoods, converging.

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But all those other flaws pale beside the hour's horrifying (and buzz-generating) showstopper: an act of savage criminal violence inflicted on one of the show's strongest characters. It was handled fairly tastefully by HBO standards, but also in a way that reduced its victim, a complex and steely character, to punching bag status, and that seemed, for a David Simon production, weirdly off-key.

If you haven't seen the episode, you should stop reading now.

If you have seen it, you know which subplot I'm referring to: the rape of Khandi Alexander's character, LaDonna Batiste-Williams, by two anonymous thugs who invaded her bar after closing time.

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"Would you rather have a strong economy or a four-hour lunch?" This is Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn) imploring Janette (Kim Dickens) to stay in New Orleans instead of leaving for New York, but his words reflect the patient, sensual spirit of HBO's "Treme," a four-hour lunch of a drama series if there ever was one. All season we've been treated to episodes that center on live music, great food, second-line parades, ambling along at a pace best described as audaciously relaxed. But while such bold choices made David Simon's "The Wire" an outright masterpiece, "Treme's" relentless effort to capture the "real" New Orleans sometimes sinks viewers into an blurry fog of dark, packed dive bars and crowded late-night parties, only to jolt them out of their blues-chord-induced trance with another awkward scene where this or that character smilingly greets this or that famous face and trades mutually flattering banter.

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No one will ever fault HBO's "Treme" for not being ambitious enough. But sometimes when you try to tackle a Great Big Idea directly, it slips out of your fingers like a greased bowling ball. This is the trouble with big ideas in general. Even Shakespeare delayed rolling out the heavy philosophical artillery until after the punning jesters had pleased the ruffians in the pit, the young romantic's waxing poetic about his lover had delighted the ladies, and some nefarious plot had been hatched. Despite the ways it lingers on the sights, sounds and sensations of New Orleans -- as well as the anguish and longing of its inhabitants in the wake of Katrina -- "Treme" can't resist pouncing right on top of the gigantic question of What Went Wrong Here, and this otherwise nuanced story wobbles under the weight of such an ambitious inquiry.

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I am an old fan of David Simon, the show's creator, and spent Friday nights in college obsessively watching "Homicide: Life on the Streets," the detective show based on his book. But my anticipation of "Treme" had been fraught with concern: Would "Treme" get the city right? What kind of effect would it have on the city? Could it possibly manage to capture the fact that we are so lucky to live here -- and yet that residing here comes at great risk and cost? A few weeks ago, I had a conversation about my worries out on the streets of New Orleans' Central City, a largely unflooded, historic neighborhood whose shotgun homes have recently heard as many fatal gunshots as any neighborhood in North America. It was Super Sunday, an annual Mardi Gras Indian "holiday," and men, women and children packed the streets in vividly detailed, painstakingly stitched, brightly colored full-body Indian suits. I talked with a veteran civil rights lawyer, Mary Howell, in the middle of a normally busy street. After seeking to end police abuse against Mardi Gras Indians and other New Orleanians for years, Howell was present this day as a legal observer. We talked about Toni Burnette, the character in "Treme" based on Mary and depicted by the terrific Melissa Leo, who captured her characteristic diction and gestures with great aplomb in the premiere, and how the show might impact next year's Super Sunday: Would "Treme" open the floodgates to hipsters and cultural tourists, Americans longing for a non-homogenized version of community?

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Then along comes David Simon to bring the joys and sorrows of New Orleans alive for us, once and for all. In their new HBO drama "Treme" (premieres 10 p.m. Sunday, April 11), Simon and co-creator Eric Overmyer offer up such an intimate portrait of this strange, soulful American city that watching it makes you feel as if you're there, mopping your brow over a cold beer in a dark corner bar, taking in a jazz band at a club, tapping your foot along with a parade on its streets. Suddenly, all the talk of the uniqueness of New Orleans culture, the passionate embrace of its music, the struggle to revive the Lower Ninth Ward and bring its natives back home in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, all of it comes together and you can feel the heartbreak of this city, from the second-line parade that opens the first 80-minute episode to the slow funeral procession that ends it.

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"The police told us, 'If we hear one more note, we'll arrest the whole band,'" said Tabb a few days later, at a fundraiser to help defray the costs of James' burial. "Well, we did stop playing," said Andrews. "We were singing, lifting our voices to God. You gonna tell me that's wrong too?" Drummer Ellis Joseph of the Free Agents Brass band, who was also in the procession, said, "They came in a swarm, like we had AK-47s. But we only had instruments."

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