What brought an international documentary team to a hardware store in South Mississippi?

The longtime owner of Hubbard’s Waveland Hardware got a unexpected call last year. An international television production company was filming a story about Hurricane Katrina, they told him.

They wanted to visit his store.

“I went, ‘wow’,” said David Hubbard, whose family has run the business since his parents opened it in the 1950s. “That’s not too shabby.”

Big Wave Productions , a United Kingdom-based company that has created documentaries for BBC and National Geographic, filmed on Tuesday in Waveland.

They will feature Hubbard, 75, who has worked at the store since he was 14 and who reopened it with his family six days after Katrina.

Big Wave Productions films documentaries about science, wildlife, history and adventure. The company recently featured a documentary on seal researchers in England’s Farne Islands and also filmed a project in Australia about the world’s largest sharks. Its work often appears on BBC, National Geographic, Disney+, Discovery Channel and the Smithsonian Channel, among others.

It will be the crew’s first time in Mississippi, Director Mark Woodward said Tuesday morning from New Orleans, just before the team headed to Waveland.

“We wanted to hear firsthand from someone about what its like to live through a hurricane,” Woodward said. “As Europeans, we don’t really get that level of natural disaster.”

The filming in Waveland is one feature in a six-part nature and science documentary series called “Deep Dive North America.” The series will follow Lizzie Daly, a scientist, filmmaker and wildlife TV host who recently worked on a similar show called “Deep Dive Australia.”

Daly will travel the North American coastline to teach viewers about its wildlife and environment, according to an email the production company sent the city outlining its plans. The series will show her meeting with scientists and conservationists and exploring local communities.

Waveland will appear in an episode about the challenges of living on a low-lying coast in the path of hurricanes, Woodward said. The episode will also include shark biologists in Florida’s Everglades and an adventure in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya swamp.

The crew talked with Hubbard to understand how the store rebuilt after Katrina. The storm attacked Waveland with 120 mph winds and nearly 30 feet of storm surge that leveled neighborhoods and killed dozens across Hancock County.

“We narrowed in on Waveland just because of the level of devastation that was there,” Woodward said. “It was clearly a pivotal moment in the town’s history.”

MS Coast store beloved for decades

Hubbard’s was lucky after Katrina: It sits on the highest ground in the city. Thirty-nine inches of storm surge flooded the store, Hubbard said, but its walls stood. It soon opened a window for customers but could not let them inside because the water had left it a mess. The Red Cross came daily. The store became an ice and clothing drop-off site.

Hubbard said he started working at the store full-time in 1969, just after Hurricane Camille. The store takes an old-school approach: staff walk people through the aisles to find what they need and visit with customers, many of whom are regulars. After the city announced the filming last week at the Board of Aldermen’s meeting, Hubbard said people called to say congratulations.

Business boomed for a year after Katrina. But the hardware store later struggled because “half our town was gone,” Hubbard said. “There were no houses left for them to live in.”

An influx of newcomers in recent years has strengthened the store again.

“We’ve healed,” Hubbard said. “But it has taken a long time.”

Filming in Waveland

Woodward, Daly and a camera operator visited Waveland on Tuesday. They planned to film at the hardware store and around the city.

The crew has traveled from Alaska to Belize, Woodward said. The group travels fast during the series, spending two days at a time in each place. They have enjoyed the Gulf Coast, Woodward said.

The series will air next summer. Big Wave Productions, based in Brighton, England, is producing “Deep Dive North America” for Love Nature, a Canadian broadcaster. Love Nature is broadcast around the world and plays on several channels and streaming services in the U.S.

Hubbard said he was flattered by the call.

“It ought to be fun,” he said Monday. “I just hope I can do them justice.”

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