Film Editor Jess Parker comments on the opening of the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, citing its potential to become a fan-favourite series
Spoilers ahead for episodes one and two.
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, a spinoff of popular US reality TV competition RuPaul’s Drag Race, is back for its fourth series, with two episodes out at the time of writing. Hosted by RuPaul Charles and judged by Michelle Visage, Alan Carr, Graham Norton and a new celebrity guest judge each week, the show takes a group of the UK’s best drag queens and places them head-to-head in a whole host of challenges. RuPaul’s Drag Race UK has seen a great deal of success in comparison to the show’s other spinoff iterations, and this season has started very strongly.
Series Four of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK begins with 12 contestants from all corners of the UK. Usually, each episode runs fairly formulaically. Contestants are judged on a mini-challenge, a main challenge, and a runway. The best performing queen will win a ‘RuPeter Badge,’ and the bottom two queens will lip sync against each other, with the loser being sent home.
Adorned in looks inspired by Mr Blobby and Cadburys chocolate, Black Peppa made her mark on the competition from the get-go.
Episode One of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, entitled ‘ST4RT Your Engines’ and featuring guest judge Joanna Lumley, asked the queens to present two looks on the main stage runway: a look inspired by the BBC, and a look showing off who they are as a drag queen. Birmingham’s own Black Peppa came out on top this episode. Adorned in looks inspired by Mr Blobby and Cadburys chocolate, Black Peppa made her mark on the competition from the get-go. After a fairly lacklustre lip sync performance, Just May was justly eliminated from the competition.
Episode Two, entitled ‘Yass-tonbury Festival’ and featuring guest judge FKA Twigs, included one of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’s most popular challenges: the girl-group challenge. On the main stage, the queens were asked to all write and perform verses to the same song and perform in two groups: ‘Queens of the Bone Age’ and ‘The Triple Threats’.
Controversially, RuPaul decided to judge the queens as groups, meaning that stellar performances by Black Peppa and Baby were overshadowed by the overall consistency of ‘Queens of the Bone Age’. Every member of this group subsequently received RuPeter Badges, seemingly diminishing the worth of the badge and the win. After losing the lip sync, Starlet left the competition in fairly dramatic fashion, unconventionally refusing to leave on an exit line. Skipping out on exit lines seems to be a trend for RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, having previously been refused by Birmingham’s Ginny Lemon as well.
It is exciting to see a queen from Birmingham’s queer scene thriving amongst such tough competition.
It is exciting to see a queen from Birmingham’s queer scene thriving amongst such tough competition. For many years, fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK have been desperate to see Black Peppa take some time off from performing at the Nightingale Club to grace our screens with their unique drag style. With their individual interpretations and approaches to challenges, Black Peppa is certainly becoming a front-runner for Series Four so far.
Series Four of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK is shaping up to be one of the UK spinoff’s strongest line-ups yet. Both episodes kept up a good pace and showed the queens’ different approaches to drag throughout. Of course, the season has only just begun, but I do believe that RuPaul’s Drag Race UK is one of the best things to come out of the franchise and that this season could very well become a firm fan favourite.
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