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ON 11 September 2005, 45 bodies were recovered from Memorial Medical Center, New Orleans. The hospital had been hit by Hurricane Katrina, then the most devastating storm in US history. Patients, staff and their families were stranded for five days by floodwaters. Conditions were apocalyptic. Deaths were expected.

The aftermath brought uncomfortable revelations. Some bodies contained potentially dangerous levels of morphine and other drugs. The actions of Anna Pou, a doctor at the hospital, were being probed (a grand jury ultimately declined to indict her).

Our knowledge of what happened comes mostly from Sheri Fink, whose has now been dramatised in a TV mini-series of the same name.

Five Days at Memorial streamlines the stories included in Fink鈥檚 account, so there is time to flesh out key characters, such as Emmett Everett, a patient with paraplegia. He was one of several whose care may have been badly affected by ingrained attitudes to weight and disability.

The series鈥� linear structure is its biggest asset, in that it helps to recreate the experience of working in the hospital during the crisis. Dread creeps up on you as you hear the growing thunder of water and witness the failure of back-up generators. Like those at the hospital, you feel abandoned.

But by mostly prioritising the perspectives of Memorial鈥檚 staff over the patients, a one-sided portrayal emerges. In Fink鈥檚 account, the horrific conditions are dovetailed with glimpses of the investigation into Pou and nuanced precis of the ethical arguments around euthanasia.

On the whole, the first five episodes do a good job of detailing the failures that led to catastrophe. Memorial had no emergency plan for flooding during a hurricane, for example. Aid teams elsewhere in New Orleans sat idle for hours and the hospital was inexplicably moved down the priority list for evacuation.

Throughout, we are drip-fed falsehoods that underpinned key decisions by staff at Memorial, only to see them debunked. On the final day of evacuations, for instance, many believed the hospital was running out of food and water, but investigation teams would later find healthy supplies.

All too often, however, the show makes changes to the book that affect the truth. Some seem innocuous, like the decision to make one patient, Elvira LeBlanc, barely conscious when her son arrives to rescue her. In reality, her voice was 鈥渟tentorian鈥�, Fink wrote.

Details of missed opportunities to help patients are also left out, such as when a cancer institute connected to the hospital that had electricity and a working generator was used by executives to take phone calls and make coffee, rather than as a hub for patient care.

Worse, the series doesn鈥檛 include more recent allegations, including one doctor鈥檚 claim that he smothered a patient.

For the many viewers who have not read Fink鈥檚 book, the show provides food for thought about how to manage the crises that we are increasingly likely to face as climate change bites deeper. But it is galling that the show takes simple truths from Fink (Katrina was horrific, the people of New Orleans were failed), and removes nuance. It adds little to diligent reporting: not only does it fail to fully convey how we got here, it fails to appear truly interested in the question.