Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 246

COVER STORYl nn Index Fox is sticking with Ullman Sports Cable Movies 45 By Howard Rosenberg 55 Los Angeles Times Radio 6 Sunday Listings 16 Monday Listings 22 Tuesday Listings 26 Wednesday Listings 32 Thursday Listings 36 Friday Listings 40 Saturday Listings Hollywood, Calif. She blew in like a cyclone, driven by hope and hype. A noisy, electrifying, taut, frantic Cockney she was, a bundle of instincts, nerve endings, hairpin curves and surprises who was going to take American TV viewers on the thrilling ride of their lives. And? It's been a year since "The Tracey Ullman Show" began on Fox Broadcasting Co. as a Sunday night half-hour of innovative sketches and a little music and still, relatively few viewers have bothered to go along for the ride.

Tracey Ullman Local cable systems TV Week has listings for the cable systems shown below. Local access programs are not listed in TV Week, but local access channels for each system are listed here. AnokaRamseyChamplin Andover 16, 33, 47, 51 53, 56 Apple Valley Farmington LakevilleRosemount 31 Bloomington 31 32, 33 Columbia HeightsHilltop, 16, 33, 51, 53 EaganBurnsville 16, 33, 51, 53, 63, 64,65 Fridley3, 8,10,12,13 Hastings 3, 10, 12 Lake MinnetonkaDeephavenLong LakeMinnetristaShorewood VictoriaExcelsiorMedina OronoSpring ParkWoodland GreenwoodMinnetonka BeachSt. BonifaciusTonka BayChanhassen Maple PlainMoundWayzata 8, 19, A brief history: British TV comedy and recording star gets her own show on new Fox network. Always interesting, frequently entertaining, more than occasionally brilliant.

Sings nicely, plays amazing range of characters. High acclaim, low ratings. At 28, rising star. Few movies include "Plenty." Several hit records. A scream on talk shows.

Remarkable mimic. Wife of successful British TV producer Allan McKeown, 41 Mother of 2-year-old Mabel. Have voices, will travel. Some predict epic future. She can be the next decade's major star, her first TV producer, Paul Jackson, says in London.

She's "the sound you don't know you're missing until you've heard it," her present TV producer, James L. Brooks, weighs in. The sound is going largely unheard. The British dubbed Tracey Ullman "Our Trace." They went in droves to buy her pop album, "You Broke My Heart in 17 Places," and watched the telly in droves as she broke their funny bones in 1 7 places. In America, though, the colossus of comedy has collided with the colossus of TV reality.

Through February, her show had what I am, because I can't bear being called a wacky, zany comedienne. I'm not a comedienne. I'm a character actress. I couldn't get up and tell a joke to save my life." Her gift of mimicry is astounding. She's a melting pot of voices, a sponge, observing and absorbing, sifting and refining, running through her Xerox brain the impressions of a lifetime.

Confronting Ullman is like confronting Sybil's 17 personalities. She's part invention, and just which part is sometimes undetectable. There's her Cockney, for example. Not genuine. She acquired it at age 18 "for career reasons," to set her apart from the suburban girls she grew up with.

The mimicry began as a child and went on and on. "She's just brilliant a bloodsucker of personalities," says Ruby Wax, an American with a TV talk show in England. "You walk away, and she's taken a little bit of your brain." Ullman communicates in her own brand of tongues. "You could put her in a room with almost anyone alive, and she would be able to give you a representation of that person after a while," says Brooks. "It's different than it is with comedians.

It's not like she's on. She just starts to talk in voices, and suddenly she's creating." Distributed by the Los Angeles Times- Washington Post News Service nation's so-called fourth network, however, few industry observers expected any Fox prime-time show to immediately have a major impact in the ratings. What's more, Ullman's Nielsens have improved in 1988, stretching to a 4.6 rating and 7 percent audience share Jan. 24, its best marks since its premiere. That's enough to stiffen Fox's upper lip.

"Tracey is probably where most of us expected her to be in her first (full) season," says Jamie Kellner, Fox president and chief operating officer. "We believe as strongly as ever in Tracey as a real star. We're too new to be discouraged by ratings." Chance-taking Fox may be the ideal venue and Brooks, executive producer of her series, the ideal mentor for a performer as unconventional as Ullman. Fox surely was mainly eyeing Brooks' glittering pedigree: His latest movie is the lauded blockbuster "Broadcast he also directed the Oscar-honored "Terms of Endearment" and was instrumental in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Rhoda," "Taxi" and "Lou Grant" on TV. The network followed its original 26-episode commitment with an order for another 30 in October.

Fox has also granted Ullman creative wide-open spaces compared with what she could expect elsewhere. She's been called a social satirist. "It sounds really intelligent," she says, "so I'm going to say that's 20 Minneapolis MTN, 32, 33, 34, 35, 55 North Central BlameCenterville Circle PinesCoon RapidsHam LakeLexingtonLino LakesSpring Lake Park 16, 33, 51 53, 63, 64 Northwest Brooklyn ParkBrooklyn Center Robbinsdale Golden ValleyNew HopeOsseoMaple Grove PlymouthCrystal 61 62, 63, 64, 65, 66 RosevilleArden HillsFalcon HeightsLauderdaleMounds View New BrightonSt. Anthony Shore-viewLittle CanadaNorth Oaks 16, 33, 51,53,63,64, 66, 67, 68,69 St. Louis Park 8,10, 22 St.

Paul 18, 32, 33, 34, 35 ShakopeeChaska 3, 10, 12 SouthwestEden PrairieEdina HopkinsMinnetonkaRichfield 32, 33, 34, 35 South Washington County St. Paul ParkCottage GroveWoodburyGrey Cloud IslandNewport 3, 10, 12, 22 Washington CountyStillwaterBay-portOak Park Heights 3, 10, 12, SO White Bear LakeNorth St. PaulOak-daleMahtomediWillernie MaplewoodDellwoodGrant Town-shlpBirchwood VillageLake Elmo Vadnais HeightsWhite Bear Township 3. 10, 51, 53, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68 averaged a tiny 3.1 rating and 5 percent share of the audience, reaching about 2.7 million TV households. Those audience totals rank her near the bottom of a Fox Sunday night lineup that is near the bottom of the national Nielsen rankings.

Given the newness of Fox as the.