Does RuPaul’s Drag Race UK really represent the country’s thriving scene?

So far, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK has everything you would expect: Gemma Collins drag, a Downtown Abbey recreation challenge and British queens explaining the word ‘tuppence’ to a bewildered RuPaul. (Spoiler: it’s slang for ‘vagina’.) We’re only two episodes in, but already the show has proven itself to be cheekier and more charming than its US counterpart. It’s obviously lower budget (seriously, who the hell decided on a badge as a main challenge reward instead of luxury vacations or human hair wigs?) but the show is still bringing a taste of the UK drag scene to a global audience. So, it’s worth asking: just how representative is it?

The answer is—as it always is with Drag Race—complicated. UK drag varies wildly across different regions, and the show does hint at that: Vinegar Strokes (whose name has extremely NSFW origins) is a West End queen that nails the campy pantomime-style drag that Britain is famous for; meanwhile, The Vivienne brings the sort of gloriously crass, razor-sharp wit—as well as the thick accent—that only a Liverpool girl can deliver. 

Crystal is a by-product of London’s grittier, more gender-bending drag scene; Cheryl Hole is basically an Essex mascot; Yorkshire starlet Divina De Campo represents a distinctive breed of seasoned queen, whose skills have been honed over decades of live performances. Key regional scenes are missing (more on that later), but to point this out so early on feels unfair: one season will never represent an entire country.

Interestingly, office watercooler chat points to the fact that Britain, much like the US, is in the midst of a political shit-show. Sum Ting Wong’s drag name is a reclamation of the racist impressions she hears on a regular basis, which is unsurprising: hate crimes have risen exponentially since the Brexit vote in 2016. Then there’s Belfast queen Blu Hydrangea, whose confession that she feels isolated as the only Irish contestant, points to political and geographical divisions— already, she has given interviews about Northern Ireland and its comparatively restrictive laws. The UK is fractured right now, and the show at least acknowledges that.

Elsewhere, the British cultural references come thick and fast, thankfully. The show’s charm lies partly in the unfiltered enthusiasm of anglophile Michelle Visage, and Ru’s confusion when faced with unfamiliar British references. When The Vivienne impersonated reality star Kim Woodburn, she hastily explained: “She’s a cleaner off the telly… she became very famous on Big Brother!” Then, there are Alan Carr’s brilliant one-liners, guaranteed to have US viewers googling terms like ‘teabagging’.

This cross-cultural exchange doesn’t always work, though. Baga Chipz’ ill-advised impersonation of Amy Winehouse, which basically mocked the addictions that killed her, led Andrew Garfield to say that “us Brits” take the piss out of dead stars to “honour” them. It was a strange cultural generalisation, and one that felt like a desperate attempt to justify a gross caricature that Twitter rightly dragged.

Judges also remain stubbornly fixated on the idea that high-glamour is the only way to go. Although more avant-garde, experimental queens have thrived on the US original, there seems to be a clear bias towards hyper-femme queens. In a UK context in particular, this doesn’t work. When The Vivienne pays tribute to late Liverpudlian icon Pete Burns in a pair of his treasured Vivienne Westwood pirate boots, the judges love the look but still bristle at the lack of heels (like they do at Crystal’s armpit hair in the second episode). Small comments like these are to be expected, but they demonstrate a lack of understanding of UK drag, and its resistance to hyper-femininity.

This is where the lack of representation comes in. Across the country there are bearded queens, monster queens, punk queens and genderf*ck mavericks whose drag never gets a look-in. The avant-garde magic of Manchester’s scene is missing; so is the f*cked-up horror of Birmingham-based DragPunk and the messy, chaotic joy of performers like Baby Lame. There’s still a lack of trans and non-binary representation—highlighted in articles by performers like Chiyo Gomes and Amrou Al-Kadhi—and cisgender women still don’t get a look in, which means that any claim of the show being truly ‘representative’ is untrue. Well, at least to an extent—accusations of misogyny are common across UK drag scenes.

A lack of diversity across the board (eight of the ten contestants are white) has been called out endlessly on social media, explained through a lack of audition tapes and mitigated by optimism that the first season’s success will drive more queens from all backgrounds to apply. These narratives always orbit Drag Race, and for good reason— despite the success of similar but more experimental shows like Dragula, it remains at the forefront of mainstream drag visibility. For this reason alone, people want it to be perfect, or at least, to try its best to be.

RuPaul’s Drag Race UK isn’t perfect. But it is campy, hilarious and arguably more charismatic than its hyper-polished US counterpart, which in many ways, is true of the UK drag scene in general. There are plenty of radical, avant-garde queens who complicate expectations, but the show is still looking at the UK scene through a US lens. Glamour is still the ultimate goal, and Ru’s own belief that cisgender men have ownership over drag is still evident in the casting. 

The show is undeniably entertaining, and will obviously build huge profiles for some UK queens—the importance of that shouldn’t be underestimated. But it will never truly encapsulate the diversity of the UK scene. The only way to see its true beauty up close is to go to gigs, support regional performers and scratch beyond the shiny, polished Drag Race veneer.