SockMonkey
Staff member
New cunt-ry, new thread.
Start your engines guvna and may the best shitty impression of an English accent WIN!
Start your engines guvna and may the best shitty impression of an English accent WIN!
RuPaul's Drag Race UK
- Thread starter SockMonkey
- Start date
Just to prepare y’all....I think they may do this on the US set.
SockMonkey
Staff member
This has taken the industry by surprise because BBC3 have no money and have always said before that they don’t want entertainment formats.
It’s difficult to see how WoW are going to make money on this considering how small the margins will be and product endorsement being prohibited.
It also flies in the face of what was widely understood to be Ru/WoW’s strategy to make Drag Race the first global entertainment franchise to sit entirely on an SVoD (like Netflix) once the Viacom deal expires.
Bear in mind that UK Viacom channels (C5, MTV, Comedy Central) would have contractually had first refusal on a UK version. So it’s only on BBC3 because they all turned it down.
Finally, Ru notoriously dislikes travel and on his last couple of visits to the UK has refused to do Drag. Is the BBC3 money really enough to talk him round?
I always assumed the path they’d take would be to do “language” versions that could take Queens from various nations with shared lingo. So more UK, CAN, NZ, Irish, SA and NZ queens on the “Ru” version (filmed in LA) and then a big Ru equivalent to do Spanish language versions, Chinese language version etc.
Very strange for Ru personally to go *this* “local”.
It could be great. But my main concerns are...
- Things looking budget as hell
- Ru not getting the UK cultural references
- Only young contestants (it’s a youth channel)
- BBC compliance sucking any controversy and messiness or difficult subject matter out of it.
I’ve seen lots of fans post queens they’d love to see on and while I do hope there’s a mix of talent, I’d love to see a lot more traditional “UK” queens than...young queens who happen to live in London but do drag because they saw Drag Race when they turned 16 and wanted to emulate Violet
The BBC has to be the worst place to put Drag Race and then they put it on BBC three! It’s going to be dead before it even airs.
SockMonkey
Staff member
Why? Way more people have access to iPlayer than they do Netflix or Comedy Central. BBC Three has become known for cult hits now, and the BBC putting stuff like Killing Eve online before TV broadcast has shown it can be a massive boost via word of mouth.
I just want it to be British RuPaul for British fans. Not American RuPaul with British Queens. Get Gemma Collins and Allison Hammond and the like on board. Lip sync to Atomic Kitten. Track down the middle aged Blackpool / Manchester / Liverpool Queens. Make it naff as hell.
Urgh it has ITV2 written all over it so I’m a bit disappointed it’s on BBC3.
Urgh it has ITV2 written all over it so I’m a bit disappointed it’s on BBC3.
To be fair he cites Alexandra Burke’s Heartbreak On Hold as one of his fave albums.
We better get Kim Woodburn, Gemma Collins, Nigella, Hyacinth Bucket, Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone for the snatch game.
A choice if I've ever seen one.
