I've been watching Treme, and one of the things I love about the show is the way it builds provocative and beautiful drama from the roots of real events. So many works use the phrase "Inspired by actual events." Treme actually seems inspired.
I've been vexed in the past when a work based on history fictionalizes too much - Lady Jane especially disappointed me by portraying her as more of a social reformer than she really was - but I didn't mind the historical inaccuracies in Hamilton, and I don't mind at all that, in Treme, David Simon tells the stories he wants to tell using a distinctive blend of fiction and recent history.
If I could tell you what the show was about, I wouldn't have to make it.
- David Simon in Wired
I first got a sense of just how much fact informs Treme when I looked up Oliver Thomas and discovered that he was playing a version of himself in a lightly fictionalized version of his own story.
I went on to discover the links between Toni Bernette and real-life lawyer Mary Howell and the ACLU, and I was shocked to learn about the real-life journalist A. C. Thompson and his investigation into the police murder of Henry Glover, and intrigued to find out that Janette's story was loosely based on Susan Spicer's life.
There's a whole journal article about how facts inform the drama of Treme: "Fiction and Reality in HBO’s Treme: A Narrative Alchemy at the Service of Political Truth".
Treme feels to me like David Simon felt there were specific stories that needed to be told, and that he knew how to tell them in a way that would reach people better than a strict documentary style. It works for me, and I am grateful to have a skilled storyteller crafting these difficult stories into serial art.