Totally Tracey Online
Friday, May 02, 2008
SOTU Renewed!
Variety is reporting this morning that State of the Union has been renewed by Showtime for a second season of seven episodes in 2009. Only seven episodes? It's better than the five of the just-completed first season, but still.... And I wonder if the budget for these seven episodes will allow for more guest stars to appear. Not that there's anything wrong with seeing Tracey as so many characters.
Labels: Showtime, State of the Union
Sunday, March 23, 2008
SOTU: A Review
Tracey Ullman returns to comedic series television with a new series, Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union (SOTU), on a new network (Showtime, after 14 years with HBO) and with a slightly different approach to skewering the foibles of Americans. It’s been nine years since her HBO series Tracey Takes On… ended, and while she hasn’t been completely absent from the small screen (two seasons of a fashion-related program and two comedy specials for HBO), her voice has been missed. Now, emboldened by becoming an American citizen in 2006, she’s back. Fans will not be disappointed.
The premise of the series is simple. Each episode focuses on a day in the life of America as seen through the lives of its citizens and residents, both famous and unknown. Stock footage and linking narration (provided by Peter Strauss) take the viewer from one vignette to the next. In the course of a single typical episode, the story may flow from the dumping of a woman recovering from surgery on the street due to an inability to pay, to a TV reporter exposing such practices (and noting that the report would be great for her Emmy reel), to blogger Arianna Huffington wondering what to wear to the Bloggy Awards, to a pharmacist advising her elderly client about the side effects of his medication, to a soldier home from Iraq on furlough (a very short furlough) trying to see her son, and finally back to that woman who was dumped.
For those familiar with Tracey’s work from her previous American series The Tracey Ullman Show (Fox) and Tracey Takes On… (HBO), the vignettes are much shorter than a typical sketch on those series. This is a deliberate creative decision to appeal to the YouTube era of shorter attention spans. Some of the characters don’t need more time than this to have their stories told, but some could sustain longer sketches. None of the TTO characters appear in SOTU (although SOTU’s airport security guard Chantal Monticello is very similar to TTO’s airport security guard Sheneesha), but there is no reason why they couldn’t. There are musical numbers, chiefly Bollywood-style in the vignettes featuring Indian pharmacist Padma Prakesh (one of my favorites of the new characters).
Unlike her older American shows, though, SOTU features Tracey impersonating several famous people, among them Arianna Huffington, David Beckham, reporters Campbell Brown and Rita Cosby, Renee Zellweger, Cameron Diaz, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Dina Lohan (Lindsay’s mother) and Andy Rooney. Some of her targets may not care for the treatment they receive.
The inter-related nature of many of the vignettes recalls the interwoven nature of some of the TTO episodes such as Las Vegas, Hollywood and Road Rage, episodes which were and are among my favorites. The linking narration also helps to tie them together. Some of the vignettes work better than others, so if there’s one you don’t particularly care for, wait a minute or two for the next one.
The same spirit behind her previous series is present for this one, so those who didn’t care for her work in those will probably not care for her in this one, either. Diehard fans, though, will welcome her return, their only disappointment being that there are only five episodes in this first season. Let us hope that Showtime picks it up for a second season and beyond, for it will be worth it.
The premise of the series is simple. Each episode focuses on a day in the life of America as seen through the lives of its citizens and residents, both famous and unknown. Stock footage and linking narration (provided by Peter Strauss) take the viewer from one vignette to the next. In the course of a single typical episode, the story may flow from the dumping of a woman recovering from surgery on the street due to an inability to pay, to a TV reporter exposing such practices (and noting that the report would be great for her Emmy reel), to blogger Arianna Huffington wondering what to wear to the Bloggy Awards, to a pharmacist advising her elderly client about the side effects of his medication, to a soldier home from Iraq on furlough (a very short furlough) trying to see her son, and finally back to that woman who was dumped.
For those familiar with Tracey’s work from her previous American series The Tracey Ullman Show (Fox) and Tracey Takes On… (HBO), the vignettes are much shorter than a typical sketch on those series. This is a deliberate creative decision to appeal to the YouTube era of shorter attention spans. Some of the characters don’t need more time than this to have their stories told, but some could sustain longer sketches. None of the TTO characters appear in SOTU (although SOTU’s airport security guard Chantal Monticello is very similar to TTO’s airport security guard Sheneesha), but there is no reason why they couldn’t. There are musical numbers, chiefly Bollywood-style in the vignettes featuring Indian pharmacist Padma Prakesh (one of my favorites of the new characters).
Unlike her older American shows, though, SOTU features Tracey impersonating several famous people, among them Arianna Huffington, David Beckham, reporters Campbell Brown and Rita Cosby, Renee Zellweger, Cameron Diaz, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Dina Lohan (Lindsay’s mother) and Andy Rooney. Some of her targets may not care for the treatment they receive.
The inter-related nature of many of the vignettes recalls the interwoven nature of some of the TTO episodes such as Las Vegas, Hollywood and Road Rage, episodes which were and are among my favorites. The linking narration also helps to tie them together. Some of the vignettes work better than others, so if there’s one you don’t particularly care for, wait a minute or two for the next one.
The same spirit behind her previous series is present for this one, so those who didn’t care for her work in those will probably not care for her in this one, either. Diehard fans, though, will welcome her return, their only disappointment being that there are only five episodes in this first season. Let us hope that Showtime picks it up for a second season and beyond, for it will be worth it.
Labels: Showtime, State of the Union
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
An interview, and a Facebook page
I got a couple of things to mention today. The first is the official Facebook page for SOTU. The second is another clip from Showtime's SOTU page, which happens to be a short interview with Tracey interspersed with some SOTU clips. Here's that interview:
Labels: Facebook, Showtime, State of the Union
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
A Preview of the State of the Union
Here is one of those video clips I mentioned in my previous post -- the President's Day clip (it may have come and gone, but it's still hilarious viewing):
Labels: Showtime, State of the Union
Saturday, February 16, 2008
SOTU Official Site (with promo clips)
For those of us in the US, the official site for State of the Union is now up and running. What you'll find here now are three promo clips that should be airing on Showtime (I haven't seen them yet, though). The oldest one is a First Look at the series; the second is a short interview with Tracey, and the newest is a President's Day clip. In that one, you'll see her as several different characters, both real (Dina Lohan and Andy Rooney) and created (including an updated Sheneesha, still on airport security detail).
Unfortunately for those outside of the US, Showtime is notorious for blocking all access to its site for anyone not in the US. I'm sure someone has devised means for getting around that, but I won't get into that here.
Unfortunately for those outside of the US, Showtime is notorious for blocking all access to its site for anyone not in the US. I'm sure someone has devised means for getting around that, but I won't get into that here.
Labels: Showtime, State of the Union
Thursday, January 31, 2008
USA Weekend Who's News Blog
Tracey was interviewed today by Lorrie Lynch for the USA Weekend Who's News blog, thereby getting some early promotion for State of the Union. Readers were asked what questions they wanted to ask, and those formed the basis of the interview. We learned why SOTU is on Showtime rather than HBO (executive Bob Greenblatt moved from HBO to Showtime, and Tracey wanted to continue working with him, so she made the move too), why there are only five episodes in this first series (that's all the budget allowed), what it was like to become a US citizen ("mind-blowing", she said) and who her favorite guilty-pleasure cable news personality is (Rita Cosby of Fox News).
Two months and counting....
Two months and counting....
Labels: citizenship, Showtime, State of the Union
Monday, January 28, 2008
9 Weeks and counting...
It's now 9 weeks until the premiere of State of the Union. I know this because Showtime has just started airing a repeat run of the first season of The Tudors. The tenth and final episode is slotted to air March 30, leading into the first episode of its second season, which in turn leads into the debut of SOTU.
This should be a prime time to watch out for SOTU previews. There was a partial preview last night ("partial" because the promo covered all of Showtime's original programs), and I think I saw a familiar character: airport security guard Sheneesha. Same uniform, but different hairstyle. I wonder how many familiar friends we'll be seeing?
This should be a prime time to watch out for SOTU previews. There was a partial preview last night ("partial" because the promo covered all of Showtime's original programs), and I think I saw a familiar character: airport security guard Sheneesha. Same uniform, but different hairstyle. I wonder how many familiar friends we'll be seeing?
Labels: Sheneesha, Showtime, State of the Union
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
State of the Union -- March 30
Mark the date on your calendars: March 30. That's when the first episode of State of the Union (SOTU) premieres on Showtime. It'll premiere at 10 PM Eastern and Pacific, right after the premiere of the second season of The Tudors. To shamelessly rip off NBC's slogan, that'll be some Must See TV for me.
Labels: Showtime, State of the Union
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
The State of the Union
I recently came upon an interview with Robert Greenblatt, Showtime's President of Entertainment, in which he talked about the network's upcoming series lineup. He had quite a bit to say about Tracey's new project for Showtime:
- The official title is Tracey Ullman's State of the Union
- The sketches are very short, no longer than a minute and a half
- There will be recurring characters
- A typical sequence might involve a visit with two women on an Iowa farm, then an interlude with Arianna Huffington in her boudoir, followed by a look-in on a Washington, DC, anchorperson (we must qualify that, you know)
Labels: Showtime, State of the Union
