Headline: Tracey Ullman’s Show, BBC1, TV review: Our Trace is on top with spot-on spoofs and social comment
After nearly three decades, Tracey Ullman’s back on UK screens – and she was on fine fighting form in the first episode
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Tracey Ullman has been off British screens for about the same amount of time I’ve been on the planet. I can attest, a lot has changed since she left for the States in the mid-Eighties, and that’s a theme that permeates her triumphant return. Tracey Ullman’s Show is both a celebrity impression programme and a comment on Cameron’s Britain in 2016, for better or worse.
Pitch-perfect impressions are a tricky business. The look and the characterisation must be just so; to nail the voice, mannerisms and identify those tics that we don’t realise are funny until someone shows us they are. For magic, you also need a razor-sharp twist on a character that's both surprising but moreish, televisually speaking.
Ullman succeeded in all of the above in this first episode. We got kleptomaniac Dame Judi Dench pilfering wine from the supermarket; a conceited, Anglophobic Angela Merkel as a self-proclaimed sex-bomb convinced that her hair do and suit jackets drive George Osborne wild and Maggie Smith auditioning for Star Wars. Amid the A-listers were some non-famous characters, most memorably Karen, a recently-released drugs mule readjusting to life after 28 years in a Thai prison – and struggling to come to terms with the digital age and the closure of Woolies, Blockbusters and Our Price. “Don’t worry Karen, Currys is still here,” said her long-suffering mother.
Ullman, a lifelong Labour supporter also got her own politics in, not least with a musical ode to public libraries closed due to “Tory cuts”. Her ant-loving zoo keeper character didn’t add much to the party but the duds were few and far between. In the pipeline are some swipes at the royal family, and if the pictures I’ve seen of Ullman as a tweeded-up Camilla Parker Bowles and Carole Middleton are anything to go by, we’re in for a treat.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments