One of the questions we’ve always asked about Treme is how it plays outside New Orleans. Season two is just starting in Australia: how does it play out of the country?

Treme has some of the same difficulties and delights. The plots are satisfyingly complex and stretch over many hours, only sometimes tangling with each other along the way. There is a multiplicity of characters, with astonishing performances from actors both familiar and unfamiliar. And not every scene pushes along the plot: the writers make room for the small moments of life.

Treme is also different to The Wire—funnier and more joyful. If The Wire was centrally about the war on drugs and its failure, Treme is centrally about music and the consolation it can provide. Almost every tough scene is followed by a moment in which people are making music.

… and in other TV news, Cris Collinsworth has no idea what he’s talking about.

—Alex Rawls