Commentator, Satirist, Actor, Star Of The Simpsons and Spinal Tap Harry Shearer, Commissioned By BBC to Revisit New Orleans For The Tenth Anniversary Of Hurricane Katrina

BBC Radio 4 - Archive On 4

It was August 29 2005 when Hurricane Katrina made landfall southeast of thecity of New Orleans, having wreaked disaster on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  After a day of thinking it had "dodged the bullet", the Crescent City found it had been quickly and catastrophically flooded. In the aftermath the media and politicians were quick to label it a natural disaster primarily affecting the poorer black community.  But according to subsequent testimony they were wrong on both counts.  The floods that wrecked the city were man made and avoidable.  In the intervening decade, what has been revealed about the events of that night and its aftermath, what has happened to the city and what measures have been taken to avoid such a calamity occurring again?

BBC Radio 4's acclaimed Archive on 4 series has commissioned the celebratedhumorist, actor and New Orleans resident Harry Shearer to take an incisivelook at the city he knows and loves through the context of Hurricane Katrina.  Illustrated by a rich archive of interviews and testimony combined with street sound and music, New Orleans: A Portrait of a City is a compelling study of the city and the flood.  Archive congressional statements by the university-based investigators who discovered why it occurred, as well as new information about the "protective" system hurriedly built since and a trove of internal emails from the Army Corps of Engineers during a recenthurricane event are combined with a homage to the city itself.

Harry Shearer also looks back at the history of New Orleans, its unique cultural heritage and the recurrent threat of flooding that makes New Orleanians fiercely proud of their resilience and loyalty to their city. This programme is a highly personal portrait looking at the essence of New Orleans,its past struggles and its uncertain future.

New Orleans: A Portrait of a City will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 August 29 as part of their Archive On Four series.

In 2010 Shearer wrote, directed and produced The Big Uneasy, a multi-award winning documentary feature investigating the actual causes of the 2005 flooding of New Orleans.

Harry Shearer's radio show Le Show has been broadcast throughout the US on National Public Radio every week for the past thirty years. Best known for providing character voices for The Simpsons since in began in 1987, most notably as Mr Burns, Principal Skinner and Ned Flanders, Shearer also co-created, co-wrote and co-starred as bassist Derek Smalls in the 1984 mockumentary This is Spinal Tap.  This was collaboration with Christopher Guest and friends with whom Shearer has also worked on many other projects including A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration. His television work includesthe series Nixon's the One, which was broadcast on Sky Arts last year.  He was a cast member and writer of Saturday Night Live.  His film work includes The Fisher King, Godzilla and The Truman Show.  Shearer began his career as a child actor, appearing in The Jack Benny Program, as well as the films Abbott and Costello Go to Mars and The Robe.