Trivia / The Tracey Ullman Show

• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Since Homer and Marge already had cast members voicing them, the show had auditions for Bart and Lisa. Nancy Cartwright, who had already built up a prolific career, tried out for Lisa but leaned towards and accepted Bart when she discovered that his character was more developed.
  • Yeardley Smith came in for the role of Bart, having recently moved to Los Angeles after doing Broadway shows in New York. Bonita Pietila, the casting director, observed that Smith's voice was too high for Bart. After Smith's audition, Pietila gave her Lisa.
• The Cast Showoff: The show took many opportunities to showcase Ullman's singing.
• Edited for Syndication:
  • Many of the Simpsons shorts have scenes cut in syndication for time. In "Babysitting Maggie", the entire first act is cut in all reruns. FOX censors were worried about children imitating the scene where Maggie sticks a fork in an electrical socket.
  • When the series was screened in the UK, all the Simpsons shorts were edited out, seemingly because they were designed to lead into advert breaks, which the BBC (the channel which bought the rights to The Tracey Ullman Show) do not have. Ironically, The Simpsons would become a huge success for the BBC when they won the rights several years later.^note Despite initially being beaten in the ratings by Sabrina the Teenage Witch its timeslot competition on ITV
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The show was rerun on Lifetime and Comedy Central into the late 90s, but it hasn't been available in any form outside of recordings posted on YouTube.
  • While most of the Simpsons shorts have never seen a home media or streaming service release, all of them can be found on YouTube. "Good Night" is available on the spin-off's Season 1 DVD, while "Family Portrait" appears at the beginning of the Season 18 episode "You Kent Always Say What You Want" (it can also be seen preceding the movie on the 1989 VHS release of Working Girl). "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular" has clips of "Good Night", "The Perfect Crime", "Space Patrol", "World War III" and "Bathtime". The first two acts of "Aquarium" are shown at the beginning of "Lisa Gets the Blues". Rumors suggest the holdup is a royalty dispute between Ullman and Disney, who also owns the Tracey Ullman Show itself, though the commentary reveals that Matt Groening is embarrassed by the shorts so they may never get a release.
• Missing Episode: Two Dr. N!Godatu shorts never made it to air.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Matt Groening was going to pitch an animated version of his comic strip Life in Hell, but he was worried that he'd lose the rights to the characters if he did. He sketched the Simpson family just minutes before he went into James L. Brooks' office.
  • Tracey Ullman herself was supposed to voice Marge Simpson, but she was too busy to work the recording sessions into her schedule, so the show's other female cast member Julie Kavner took the role.
  • Harry Shearer was slated to be a regular on the show, doing a weekly comedic lecture, but the idea was dropped before the first season began filming.

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