Day: March 31, 2008

The first of five episodes of Tracey Ullman’s new Showtime series, Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union, debuted last night. It’s her third go on TV with her multi-character comedy sketches, following previous Emmy-winning runs on FOX in the late 1980s and HBO in the late 1990s. Once again, she’s got a lot of voices in her head just waiting to come out, and thanks to hair and makeup, she melds into many varied roles here, too. This time, the show’s structure, a narrated mocumentary that follows a day in the life of America and Americans, hops and leaps from one scene to the next — in the debut episode alone, Ullman introduces 16 different characters in 24 minutes (39 characters overall this season). Some are real people (Laurie David, Arianna Huffington, Nancy Pelosi, Tony Sirico, Rita Cosby, David Beckham, Campbell Brown and Dina Lohan) while others are imagined impressions on everyday and not-so-everyday folk to comment upon the issues of the day. Here’s a clip of Ullman as Huffington: The debut kicks off with a Bangladeshi woman who has to work three jobs, and returns to her at episode’s end, with narrator Peter Strauss intoning, "There are approximately 12 million undocumented workers ni the United States. Nine hundred joined us within the last 24 hours. Good night, America." Other voiceovers aren’t quite so serious. Nor are all of...