Ullman's 'State' is just right

Tracey Ullman as Arianna Huffington, one of many celebrities she skewers on her new Showtime series. (cliff lipson/showtime via ap)

The day I heard that Tracey Ullman had a new series in the works, I said a little prayer to the TV gods. When the extroverted Ullman connects with the right vehicle, one that enables her to show off her amazing variety of skills, she charges full speed ahead into funny. At her best, she rates with Lily Tomlin and Carol Burnett when it comes to inventing kooky characters from scratch and impersonating celebrities. And then she has an added gift for ruthless social satire.

Good news: "Tracey Ullman's State of the Union" is precisely the right vehicle. Indeed, this new Showtime series just may be the most perfect possible showcase for Ullman, who plays almost every character appearing on the screen. The beautifully filmed half-hour comedy, premiering tomorrow night at 10, lets Ullman clown around with her face and her voices and her wigs without confining her to too much story line. She is able to joyfully leap from sketch to sketch and from character to character like she did in her 1990s HBO show "Tracey Takes On," but at a much faster speed. She is free to be her crazy, hyper-imaginative, unrestrained self.

The unifying concept of "State of the Union" is a day in the life of America. Accompanied by a pseudo-serious documentary voiceover, the camera moves across a map, stopping in different cities and towns for a visit with one of its denizens. All of the people we meet - male, female, black, white, famous, unknown - are Ullman, and most of them recur from episode to episode.

Ullman saves her spikiest portrayals for the celebrities, who range from the very famous (Renee Zellweger, Nancy Pelosi) and the semi-famous (Arianna Huffington) to the little known (environmentalist and Larry David ex Laurie David). Zellweger is a squinting, mouth-pursing mess. Pelosi gets Botox injections, complaining "Tip O'Neill never had to do this." Huffington is a multitasking blabbermouth whose every other word is "blog" and who sleeps clutching her laptop. And David is a control freak who pollutes without a conscience while flying in her private jet.

My favorite impersonation segments find Ullman thoroughly trashing Lindsay Lohan's mother, Dina, and by extension all of the Hollywood tabloid-fame-grubbers. Dina is a coarse woman who hangs out with the other starlets' mothers in a bar, while their children party in the club next door. Always drunk, she is given to such pronouncements as, "If your daughter cardiac arrests in a nightclub once, shame on you. If your daughter cardiac arrests twice, shame on me." Seriously, that is brilliant. "State of the Union" definitely contains more than its share of laugh-out-loud moments.

Interwoven with these biting portraits are characters that Ullman has invented. They can be humorous, such as a grandiose New York newscaster named Linda Alvarez or a public-access yoga instructor named Chandra Perkett, whose feet are right at her face. An Indian pharmacist from Tennessee named Padma Perkesh bursts into a full-on Bollywood production whenever she advises her customers about the side effects of drugs. She's smug, and hysterical. Ullman showily goes after social ills when she skewers famous people, but she can also subtly upend more common human traits such as vanity and delusion through her original characters.

And Ullman's originals can also be quite dear. She uses them to add dashes of poignancy to the show's rampant mockery. We watch the grim comings and goings of an undocumented New Yorker from Bangladesh who works nights. We listen to sweet, dull Irma Billings from Nebraska, who muses about God and Ryan Seacrest while hanging her laundry on the clothesline. And we meet airport security guard Chanel Monticello, who gives needy friends X-rays with her baggage-check machine.

They are what make "State of the Union" into more than a live-action cartoon. The show springs from Ullman's frenetic brain, but it also comes from her heart.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.