Television

British comedienne and actress Tracy Ullman returns to American television Sunday with the debut of her new Showtime series, Tracy Ullman's State of the Union. Ullman plays fictional characters as well as a host of notable personalities, including Cameron Diaz, David Beckham and Nancy Pelosi.

David Simon, creator and executive producer of HBO's series The Wire, joins Fresh Air to talk about his career and the genesis of the show. Simon writes many of the episodes — and some story lines come from his former job as a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

Fresh Air's TV critic David Bianculli discusses the long-term effects of the four-month-long writers' strike, and--more immediately--when we can expect new episodes of our favorite shows to return to the air.

Actor Bryan Cranston — best known as the dad on Fox TV's Malcolm in the Middle talks to Terry Gross about his newest role. He plays a meth-cooking high-school chemistry teacher in Breaking Bad, a new series on AMC.

On HBO's The Wire, actor Michael K. Williams plays Omar Little, a stick-up guy who robs only drug dealers. Omar has a scar running down his face. That's not a prosthetic scar; it's real. Williams tells Terry Gross the story behind his scar — and lots of other stories about himself and Omar.

Clark Johnson has worked as a director on several of TV's most memorable cop shows, including The Shield, Homicide: Life on the Street and the pilot episode of the critically acclaimed HBO series The Wire. This season, he's appearing on camera as well, as The Wire's City Editor Gus Haynes.

David Bianculli, Fresh Air TV critic, shares his picks for the best television of 2007, and what he'll be watching in 2008 — he's looking forward to the upcoming seasons of ABC's Lost and HBO's The Wire.

Bianculli is the author of Teleliteracy and Television's 500 Biggest Hits, Misses, and Events. He recently launched the Web site TVworthwatching.com.

Marshall Herskovitz and his working partner Edward Zwick created and produced the critically acclaimed shows thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Once and Again. Their new collaboration is Quarterlife, a show aired in 8-minute segments on the Web site of the same name. It's about a group of 20-somethings coming of age in the digital world, but it's not just a show: Like most every Web-entertainment venture launched these days, if offers user forums and functions as a social-networking platform.

Aliens in America producers David Guarascio and Moses Port and writer Sameer Gardezi talk about their new sitcom. The story follows a young Muslim student from Pakistan on a foreign exchange program living with a Christian family in Wisconsin.

Guarascio and Port worked together previously on Just Shoot Me! and Mad About You.

The show airs Monday nights on The CW.

This year the Human Rights First Award for Excellence in Television will be given to a show that "depicts torture and interrogation in a nuanced, realistic fashion." According to interviews with military leaders, portrayal of torture on television shows has changed interrogation techniques in the field.

TV producer Adam Fierro (The Shield), intelligence expert Col. Stuart Herrington and human rights advocate David Danzig discuss TV violence.

Shows nominated for the award include Lost, Criminal Minds, The Closer and The Shield.