Tracey Ullman to return to UK screens with BBC comedy series

Tracey Ullman is making a return to the BBC three decades after she last appeared on the broadcaster that gave her her big break.

The comedian and actor who was last seen in Three of a Kind and A Kick Up the Eighties, before she went on to success in America is to make a new BBC1 comedy series called The Tracey Ullman Show.

Her new show has the same name as the one with which she cracked the US in the late 1980s on the Fox Network, and which introduced hit animation The Simpsons to the world in 1987.

During her time on the US side of the Atlantic, Ullman has fronted her own shows such as State of the Union and appeared in others including the long-running sitcom How I Met Your Mother, Ally McBeal and Will & Grace.

She has also won a number of awards, including a Golden Globe.

But the Slough-born comedian and singer was largely absent from appearances on UK shores until she returned to the UK in 2011 to appear Stephen Poliakoff’s in My City at London’s Almeida theatre.

The BBC said the new six-part show will see Ullman portraying a number of diverse and distinct characters living in, or visiting, the busy global hub that is the UK.

Ullman said: “It’s a privilege to be doing this. I still feel as inspired to inhabit people as I did when I was six, standing on the windowsill in my mother’s bedroom, putting on a show.

“The BBC has changed a bit since the last time I worked here, when it was all men in bow ties who had completed national service. Now there are a lot more women. Great ones. The important things haven’t changed, though. The BBC still provides an environment that allows you the freedom to create the best shows possible.”

BBC controller of comedy commissioning, Shane Allen, said: “It’s about time the Americans gave her back. Tracey has been the missing gem in the British comedy crown for too long. Talent doesn’t come much bigger and the BBC audience is in for a huge treat.”

Ullman’s return is one of a number of new comedies being unveiled by the BBC, including a BBC2 election special called Rory Bremner’s Election Report, a new BBC1 Ben Miller sitcom called I Want My Wife Back, a special marking 25 years of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s comic collaborations and a new series from rising star Morgana Robinson.

In addition, BBC1 is to air an annual lecture called the Ronnie Barker Comedy Lecture, given by a leading comic figure who is yet to be announced.