The Treme neighborhood in New Orleans, the setting of the new HBO hit series, is among the nation's oldest African-American community, where free people of color could own property as early as the 18th century. (Thaisi H. Da Silva/NYT Institute)

Residents in the city of New Orleans stopped when it came on. Some gathered together in apartments, some watched it at bars, hangout spots, by themselves, even in a funeral home. Eve Kidd Crawford watched it on her couch, sitting with the same group of friends who witnessed the Saints winning the Super Bowl together.

“We were all pretty somber,” she said. “We had the lights down and we were all drinking. We knew it was going to be hard to watch.”

The HBO logo appeared on the screen. Images of floodwaters crashing through corridors of a home, water lines decorating the walls of a dilapidated house like twisted artwork. Footage of black bandleaders dancing to the blare of saxophones filled the TV.

Crawford was almost moved to tears.

“That was the first indication that they were really going to get it right,” she said.

As it prepares to wrap up its first 10-episode season on June 20, “Treme,” the HBO drama series directed by David Simon (“The Wire”) about musicians rebuilding their lives in post-Katrina New Orleans, has garnered acclaim as one of the most accurate TV representations of the storm’s aftermath.

Simon’s series does not specifically focus on the neighborhood of Treme, a wide misconception, but rather the stories rooted in artists and performers who live in the area. Antoine Batiste, played by Wendell Pierce, is a broke trumpet player with a penchant for picking up low-paying gigs. Albert Lambreaux, a Mardi Gras Indian played by Clarke Peters, deals with the harsh reality of returning to a hurricane-stricken neighborhood. These and other characters all call the historic sector home.

Known as a hub for both free and enslaved Africans in the 1700s, Treme soon became a cultural mecca for the African community. Blacks would interact with one other in an area of the neighborhood that became Louis Armstrong Park, dancing the Bamboula, a traditional African dance, and discussing their lives.

Today’s Treme is very much a reflection of its past. The neighborhood is not all second lines and feather boas, but remains reminiscent of a battered community that used music and revelry as a means of spiritual survival.

Tom Piazza, a writer for “Treme” and author of the books “Why New Orleans Matters” and “City of Refuge,” said the use of local musical artists and bands captures the liveliness of the city. During his affiliation with the show, he realized the impact it could have on America’s perception of the city.

“Most of the country has moved on to a degree from Katrina and don’t even think about it anymore,” Piazza said. “Some people think the town is lying in ruins, some think it’s just fine. There’s a lot of grim reality in this show, and just by good fortune it is airing now during a season where New Orleans really had a wonderful spirit. It’s going to direct people’s attention back to the city.”

In the eyes of some locals, the music, the food, the vibrancy and the horror of devastation is all there, but the show’s success also comes with criticism and scrutiny, most of it from the community itself.

Naydja Bynum, president of the Historic Faubourg Treme Association, said once she heard about the show, she immediately contacted the producers to ensure the community would be an active part of the production process. The association, which hosts screenings of “Treme” for residents who don’t have HBO, offered insight to the creators during its early filming stages.

“The culture they’re trying to exemplify associated with Treme,” she said. “We needed to be involved with that.”

She’s still skeptical of aspects of the show, including its title, which she finds misleading. But she said it’s potentially a positive for the area.

“I can’t say it’s excellent because I’m still processing it,” she said. “There are so many characters they are developing.”

Before the pilot episode aired, Simon wrote a letter to the Times-Picayune in which he addressed residents like Bynum who might be uncertain about the show’s authenticity.

“Beginning tonight you are the ultimate arbiters — the only ones we really care about — on the question of whether our storytelling alchemy has managed to make anything precious or worthy from the baser elements of fact,” he wrote.

The show comes after several television series and movies attempted to capture the heart of New Orleans. “K-Ville,” a show about cops in New Orleans that premiered in 2007, and “The Big Easy,” a 1987 cop-centric film, were both criticized for overuse of New Orleans clichés — not everyone calls people “chére” around here, for instance.

At the same time, the productions brought attention and revenue to the area, and “Treme” promises to do the same. HBO and “Treme” raised $76,000 for the New Orleans Musicians’ clinic at a sold-out event on March 27.

Associate producer Laura Schweigman said the show could help the city further revitalize itself.

“There’s a good chance that the film industry could thrive here,” she said. “It can bring in a lot of money, and we’re hoping to do our part.”

The series captures minute details locals will recognize but outsiders might miss. For instance, the pride of Mardi Gras Indians is a recurring theme in the show that may resonate with anyone with a sense of belonging in a community.

Lolis Eric Elie, a writer for the show known for his work on the popular documentary “Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans,” said though the series is an insider’s show in some regards, it is still accessible to anyone willing to learn about the characters.

With this insider’s focus, the writing team has had to sacrifice some facts and chronology in the name of art and aesthetics. In one scene, Janette, a restaurant owner and chef played by Kim Dickens, orders one of her staffers to serve a Hubig’s pie. Hubig’s Bakery did not reopen until February 2006, a year after the episode takes place. The scene was criticized as a blatant inaccuracy.

“Our real loyalty is not to the specific facts that happened, but it’s to the quality of the story,” Elie said. “It is through telling a good story that we’re able to raise these issues and discuss these questions that need to be discussed now, even so long after the storm has passed.”

Schweigman got a sense of that particularity when a resident who had survived the storm approached her about one scene in the pilot.

“She watched the scene when Lambreaux walks into his house,” Schweigman said. “She smelled her house when she saw the scene, but was able to make peace of it.”

With a second season already approved, the writers of “Treme” seem ready for the challenge. And the residents they asked for permission to enter their homes, their lives and their community seem to echo one resounding sentiment: Keep going. We’ll be watching.

“These incomprehensibly hideous things have happened,” Piazza said. “The mechanism by which New Orleanians survived in the face of this was through these cultural expressions that involve a defiant grace, wit and beauty, which is essentially a way of saying ‘You’re not going to kill my spirit.’”

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