The United States of Tara

United States of Tara
United States of Tara promotional poster
Genre	Comedy-drama
Created by	Diablo Cody
Starring	Toni Collette Rosemarie DeWitt John Corbett Brie Larson Keir Gilchrist
Theme music composer	Tim DeLaughter
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	36 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Steven Spielberg Diablo Cody Alexa Junge (season 1) Jill Soloway (season 2–3) Darryl Frank Justin Falvey Craig Zisk (season 2–3)
Producer(s)	Dan Kaplow
Location(s)	Overland Park, Kansas (setting) Los Angeles, California (actual filming location)
Camera setup	Single-camera
Running time	approx. 30 min.
Production company(s)	DreamWorks Television Showtime Networks
Release
Original network	Showtime
Picture format	480i (SDTV) 1080i (HDTV)
Audio format	Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound
Original release	January 18, 2009 – June 20, 2011
External links
Website

United States of Tara is an American television comedy-drama created by Diablo Cody, which aired on Showtime from 2009 to 2011. The series follows the life of Tara (Toni Collette), a suburban housewife and mother coping with dissociative identity disorder.

The series was based on an idea by Steven Spielberg, who is the executive producer, under his DreamWorks Television label. Other executive producers include writers Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey, director Craig Zisk, and showrunners Cody and Jill Soloway. Former executive producer Alexa Junge quit as showrunner after the first season.

Principal photography was filmed in Los Angeles, California, while the show's setting is located in Overland Park, Kansas. Collette won the 2009 Primetime Emmy Award and 2010 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series for her role; the opening title sequence also won an Emmy. The show's third and final season premiered on March 28, 2011.

On May 23, 2011, Showtime announced that the series would not be renewed for a fourth season, and the series finale aired on June 20, 2011.

Tara Gregson is a wife and mother of two children in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, who has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID). When stressed, Tara often transitions into one of her alternate personalities: wild and flirty teenager T; 1950s style housewife Alice; and male, loud, beer-drinking Vietnam vet Buck. A fourth personality, Gimme, is introduced later in the first season. During the second season of the series, two further personalities were introduced. The former, called Shoshana, is Tara's "therapist" of sorts, while the sixth personality's name is Chicken, an infantile representation of Tara when she was five years old. Another personality emerges in Season 3, that of Tara's previously unknown half-brother Bryce. Tara is supported by her husband Max, daughter Kate, and son Marshall. Her sister, Charmaine, is initially not very supportive of Tara, expressing doubts about the validity of her sister's disorder, though she becomes increasingly more understanding and receptive as the series progresses. The show is a representation of a seemingly typical American family who must cope with the daily struggles of dissociative identity disorder.