Tracey Takes On: The Complete First Season

Woman-of-a-thousand-faces Tracey Ullman spins out a dozen crazed characters in her HBO series Tracey Takes On..., ranging from rampaging Jewish matron Fern Rosenthal to gay airline steward Trevor Ayliss to self-conscious/self-deluded college student Hope Finch. Each of ten episodes is dedicated to a different topic--among them Romance, Vanity, Death, and Family--and comprised of monologues, vignettes, and multi-part stories starring Ullman's wildly varying personae. Though comedy abounds, what makes Ullman's work special is her commitment to her characters as fully-rounded human beings; these are not one-joke Saturday Night Live-style gimmicks. Given the choice between a quick gag or a story turn that will make a character richer and more multi-dimensional, Ullman goes for the latter. The more time you spend with these characters, the more nuanced, vivid, and funny they become. The scenarios are delicious: Linda Granger, over-the-hill sexpot, hires a stalker to get herself some publicity; Fern Rosenthal puts on a fundraiser for a disease, then becomes furious when a cure is found just before the performance; lifestyle magazine editor Janie Pillsworth, who claims her parents are dead so they won't embarrass her, likens the genocide in Bosnia to a fight over a rent-controlled apartment in order to make it understandable to a supermodel. Guest appearances abound, including Cheech Marin, Hugh Laurie (House), Tobey Maguire (Spiderman), Michael Palin (Monty Python's Flying Circus), and Udo Kier (Blade, Blood for Dracula, among many, many more. Tracey Takes On... is a smorgasbord of Ullman's madcap charm. --Bret Fetzer