Aaron Sorkin goes behind the scenes of I Love Lucy in the Being the Ricar­dos trailer

Aaron Sorkin loves TV, and not just inso­far as he’s made a lot of it. There’s a gen­uine fas­ci­na­tion with the intri­cate process of pro­duc­tion and pres­sure-cook­er envi­ron­ment of a live set evi­dent in such shows as Stu­dio 60 on the Sun­set Strip and The News­room – as well as Being the Ricar­dos, his lat­est direc­to­r­i­al fea­ture and a return to the sound­stages he holds so dear.

Today brings the first trail­er for the film, which tracks a hec­tic week in the life of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as the usu­al scram­ble of putting togeth­er an episode of their hit CBS sit­com I Love Lucy con­verges with per­son­al and pub­lic crises. In true Sorkin­ian fash­ion, Lucy’s voiceover begins with the actress and pro­duc­er rat­tling off a list of her estimable accom­plish­ments, just one of the writer’s trade­marks crop­ping up here. (The de-ini­tial­iz­ing of the Colum­bia Broad­cast­ing Sys­tem is another.)

Nicole Kid­man takes an unex­pect­ed comedic turn as Ball, though Sorkin’s script empha­sizes her bona fides as a female trail­blaz­er in a male-dom­i­nat­ed indus­try, hav­ing lever­aged her fab­u­lous pop­u­lar­i­ty on the air into pow­er behind the scenes at the net­work. Javier Bar­dem co-stars as Arnaz, her hus­band on-screen and off‑, though their home life bears lit­tle resem­blance to the good-natured ver­sion of it they beam into America’s liv­ing rooms. (Nina Arian­da, JK Sim­mons, Tony Hale, and Alia Shawkat fill out the cast.)

Though the trail­er makes only vaguest ref­er­ence to the trou­bles swirling around the cou­ple, stu­dents of his­to­ry know that Ball was called before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee and its ring­leader Joseph McCarthy to tes­ti­fy on her rumored con­nec­tions to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Around this same time, her mar­riage to Arnaz was crum­bling, fast on the road to divorce while they pro­ject­ed an image of uni­ty and hap­pi­ness for the sake of their expand­ing media empire.

While Kidman’s no stranger to play­ing women fac­ing great oppo­si­tion with poise and inten­si­ty, the seg­ments in which she re-stages clas­sic Ball bits will be the first time we’ve seen the actress go for ha-ha fun­ny. She knows humor – take a look at To Die For, or the remake of The Step­ford Wives she starred in – but it’ll be rev­e­la­to­ry to see her play­ing to the cheap seats, liv­ing and dying by the live stu­dio audience.

Being the Ricar­dos comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 10 Decem­ber, then Ama­zon Prime Video on 21 December.