After thirty years of stateside success, Tracey Ullman returned to the BBC with a show built for the Trump-Brexit news cycle. The six half-hour episodes were shot two weeks ahead, then peppered with topical sketches filmed 48 hours before transmission, allowing her to land jokes about Prime Minister May’s latest reshuffle or Trump’s pre-dawn tweets while the ink was still wet on the front page. The gamble meant the series arrived with the bruising immediacy of a daily paper, the first British sketch show to attempt Saturday Night Live-style turnaround on a weekly budget.
Ullman’s rubber-faced company played everyone from a dead-eyed Theresa May serenading the EU to a flustered Jeremy Corbyn misplacing his allotment jam, while Anthony Atamanuik flew in to reprise his bruised-peach impersonation of Donald Trump. Supporting turns by Gemma Arrowsmith and William Andrews filled the gallery of aides, royals and Silicon Valley bros, but the spotlight stayed on Ullman’s chameleonic precision: her Brigitte Macron pouted like a Bond villain and her Angela Merkel delivered euro-zone put-downs in a Saxonian drawl sharp enough to slice schnitzel.
Produced by Caroline Norris for BBC Studios, the series swapped the polished filmic look of Ullman’s earlier HBO work for a looser studio aesthetic that could absorb last-minute rewrites. Ratings hovered around three million, respectable for a Friday-night slot against late-night football, and the format was briskly re-licenced abroad as Tracey Ullman’s Show. It ended after two short runs, but the closing credits of the final episode still managed to spoof a royal wedding that hadn’t yet happened, proof that the team could keep dancing on fast-moving ice until the music stopped.
Production Details
BBC One / 2 Seasons / 6 Episodes / 2017
Created by: Tracey Ullman (devised by)
Showrunner(s): Tracey Ullman, Gareth Edwards
Writer(s): Tracey Ullman (devised by)
Producer(s): Caroline Norris
Main Cast
Tracey Ullman as Various
Anthony Atamanuik as Donald Trump
