Tracey Ullman's State of the Union
10 pm/ET Showtime
She's back! The prodigiously talented and incredibly amusing Tracey Ullman returns for a second season of skewering Americans in the news (and celebrity visitors to America). She kicks things into comic high gear with a wickedly funny spoof of Heather Mills (Paul McCartney's ex) as a reality-TV star. Other highlights include Ullman as Texas-ranch retiree Laura Bush presiding over a garage sale featuring "doodads and objets d'art" from her White House stay, and a send-up of Celine Dion doing post-Katrina calamity cleanup in New Orleans.
Read on for previews of The Masters, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Breaking Bad and Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels.
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New releases announced today, July 24:The Big Easy - Season 2 will be coming out November 25 The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour - The Best of Season 3 (Retail 4-Disc Release) will be coming out September 16 Spin City - Season 1 will be coming out November 4 Tracey Ullman's State of the Union - The Complete Season 1 will be coming out November 11 Visit TVShowsOnDVD.com for the complete stories on these and other news items.
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Showtime has renewed Tracey Ullman's State of the Union for a second season. The network also announced The Mark Wooten Project, a six-episode series of character-driven sketches by the British-born comedian."Tracey Ullman is the veteran genius who continues to impress us with her versatility, while Marc Wootton is the up-and-comer who will surprise our audience with his own unique voice. This is an embarrassment of riches for us in the comedy department," said Showtime Entertainment chief Robert Greenblatt. — J.R. Whalen
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We always knew Tracy Ullman was quite the impressionist, but we never knew what a true comedic genius she really was until we saw this Dina Lohan sketch from the premiere of her new series, Tracy Ullman’s State of the Union. Best line? "If your daughter’s heart cardiac arrests once in a night club, shame on you. If your daughter cardiac arrests twice, shame on me."
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Question: Have you seen Tracey Ullman's new series on Showtime yet? I think it's smart and hilarious, and as much as I love her old characters, I 'm glad that she created some new ones. Her celebrity impersonations killed me, especially Arianna Huffington and Campbell Brown. I can't believe HBO let her go. Oh, wait, I can!
Answer: I reviewed it recently, and while I'm also a longtime Tracey Ullman fan, I'm not sure State of the Union represents her best work. Not so much her performance, which as always is amazing in its range, but in its scattershot choice of targets, especially a weekly sketch about Laurie David (who cares?). Many of the reviews tended to be more generous than mine, so maybe my expectations were too high. And there's much about the new series I like: the Bollywood numbers, her Buffalo news anchor character, the Renee Zellweger squint. But this is one of those shows where I felt it was giving me both too much and not enough ...
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