Stream It Or Skip It?

Katrina: Come Hell And High Water is a 3-part docuseries, with Spike Lee as one of its executive producers. Lee directs the third episode; EP Geeta Gandbhir directs the first episode, and Samantha Knowles directs the second. The series interviews survivors of Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005; the story surge created by the hurricane broke the levees protecting neighborhoods like the Lower 9th Ward, causing catastrophic flooding which killed over 1,500 people in Louisiana.

Opening Shot: “AUGUST 2025. LOWER 9TH WARD.” We see home video footage of a neighborhood, a few days before Hurricane Katrina hits.

The Gist: The series tells the stories of the storm and flood’s survivors, but it also goes over the mistakes that were made, on the city, state and federal levels, that made the impact of this historic storm so much worse than it should have been. Through interviews with journalists, experts and politicians — most notably, then Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu and Marc Morial, who was the mayor of New Orleans prior to Ray Nagin, who was mayor when the storm hit — we get a concentrated chronicle of just how much of the storm’s impact was anticipated and could have been prevented with some more attention from all levels of government in the years leading up to the storm.

In the first episode, we see the lead-up to the storm, showing how long it took Nagin to declare a mandatory evacuation, and seemed to be tone deaf to the idea that people in the poorer neighborhoods might not have the means or ability to leave the city. This was shown in how 20,000 people showed up at the Superdome, which was set up as a shelter of last resort, and was far more people than the city anticipated.

There is also a discussion about how the levee and pump system, built by the federal government in the early part of the 20th century, was never updated to meet the needs of a world undergoing climate change. Hurricane Betsy had flooded the city’s low-lying neighborhoods forty years prior to Katrina, so the residents of the Lower 9th Ward and other vulnerable neighborhoods knew it could happen again. When the levees broke the morning after the storm blew through, the worst of the flooding occurred.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This isn’t the first time Spike Lee has produced and directed a documentary about Katrina; in 2006, he directed When the Levees Broke, which was more about the immediate aftermath of the storm and how it disproportionally affected poor Black neighborhoods in New Orleans. Katrina: Come Hell And High Water discusses the storm 20 years later from survivors’ perspectives.

Our Take: Watching Katrina: Come Hell And High Water, brought up the same feelings of terror and outrage that we felt 20 years ago, especially as we started hearing about the inadequacy of the system protecting New Orleans and how it left the city’s poorest population almost unprotected. Now, with the remembrances of some of the people who went through the terror, whether they were stuck on rooftops as 20 feet of water flooded their neighborhoods or caught in the mess at the Superdome, we’re reminded that, despite Katrina’s devastation, the most tragic aspects of it could have been prevented.

One of the things that struck us when listening to the interviews of the city’s residents is how conditioned they were to ride out storms. It’s not like weather forecasters or even Nagin and his government undersold the storm, but so many hurricanes have hit the city, that it was like, as one resident put it, “getting snow in Denver.” So, even though forecasters and city officials communicated the potential severity of Katrina, they didn’t evacuate soon enough to convince people not to stay.

The mention of 1965’s Hurricane Betsy, and the rumors that the city blew up the levees to flood the poor Black neighborhoods and save the central business district, certainly points out that things didn’t really change over the intervening 40 years. As Soledad O’Brien details, even coverage of the Katrina’s immediate aftermath centered on the French Quarter and downtown before the levees were breached, despite the fact that the Lower 9th Ward and elsewhere were already underwater.

It’s telling that Nagin didn’t agree to be interviewed for the series (Louisiana’s governor at the time, Kathleen Blanco, died in 2019). He is certainly not portrayed well in the first episode, seemingly passing the buck up the governmental line before finally mandating an evacuation, and giving unrealistic routes of exit for the 140,000 people in the city who did not own a vehicle. However, at the time of the storm, he was looked at as one of the strongest governmental figures, and he earned reelection the next year (he was convicted of corruption charges in 2013, and was in prison until 2020). He’s defended himself in recent days, which makes us wonder why he didn’t want to do the same in the docuseries.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: A shot of a flooded New Orleans from the air.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to every one of the residents that agreed to be interviewed, especially Robert Green, who lost a granddaughter and his mother during the storm, as the entire family’s house started floating down the street while they were on the roof.

Most Pilot-y Line: The presence of archival footage of Michael Brown, the FEMA administrator at the time, gave us a viscerally ill feeling, because we know how badly he botched the response after the storm and how President George W. Bush told him he was doing a “great job” despite all of the mistakes.

Our Call: STREAM IT. It’s hard to forget the footage of New Orleans 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, but Katrina: Come Hell And High Water brings the storm and its aftermath down to a personal level in a way that makes the horrors of what happened fresh all over again.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.