‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ S1E8 Recap: Lip-Sync To UK Grime, You Cowards

Feel like shit, just want Drag Race UK back.

After a short and sweet eight episodes, we’ve got our first UK winner. The Vivienne was the one to beat from the beginning, and while Baga or Divina would have been more ‘daring’ choices, it makes sense that they start the new royal family with someone ready for regality.

By the show’s logic, The Vivienne is the best of British drag: polished but crass, a quadruple threat of looks, comedic chops, voice and Liverpudlian character. It’s hard to disagree — and sometimes the most obvious choice is also the best one.

It’ll be interesting to see what The Vivienne’s World Of Wonder YouTube series looks like as per her winning prize, and hopefully they don’t phone it in and have her explain UK slang to Kimora Blac. WoW has already dropped a trailer for a separate show called ‘Morning T&T’, a breakfast show where The Viv and Baga host as Trump and Thatcher. Both shows are paywalled though, so we look forward to the compilations.

Now we’re done and dusted, we can definitively say this was one of the best Drag Race seasons in years, right up there will All Stars 2 and the golden era of 2-6. It wasn’t just the fresh coat of paint, either: we could write about how the season was been divorced of Drag Race‘s baggage and allowed the queens to exist without applying them to archetypes or forcing meta-references, but the shift was deeper.

That much was clear in the finale, where the top three were all so warm to each other. We didn’t have an ‘Ariel Versace’s Wig-gate 2.0′: instead of over-producing conflama, the show just let the queens be drag queens in front of a camera. Not to say there weren’t catty moments or reads, but that they always landed with a levity, which might speak to the queens’ piss-take humour. It bodes well for Drag Race Australia, given our tendency to make fun of everyone and everything, including ourselves.

This season, no one ever took themselves too seriously, which is essentially a death kneel for a drag queen even if it does make good TV. Perhaps it’s as simple as not having 100k on the line, but the Drag Race UK‘s resounding warmth felt more like the best of the queer community — irreverence guided by kindness, the former a kind of defence against pain and the latter a refusal to let it turn you sour.

The show’s tone also appeared to temper the show’s oft-toxic fan base, too. Then again, the show aired on WowPresents+ in the US, and social media reaction did feel a little muted — perhaps it just wasn’t as big as the regular season, and so escaped the attention of the trolls. Still, we’d like to think the lack of death threats came from the show itself, and perhaps naively, we hope it carries across to the S12 next year.

Dancing, Singing And Pocasting? Wow, That’s A Lot

The not-so secret truth we all like to ignore about Drag Race is that the top 4/3 episode is normally a bit dull.

They perform a big number, record a podcast segment that never actually gets released off the show, and RuPaul forces them to cry by showing them a photo of themselves as a child. UK may avoid a lot of the trappings of Drag Race‘s more middling moments, but not even it could make this episode feel like a flat final lap.

The trio have to provide their own verse to RuPaul’s ‘To The Moon’, which is one of her better recent tracks — unfortunately, the remix itself is a little slow due to the built-in dance breaks, and lacks the punch of a ‘Read U, Wrote U’ or Frock Destroyer song.

We were a little surprised by The Vivivenne’s win: the episode seemed to set up Divina for the crown, but by the time we got to the judging panel, it was clear who had it in the bag. Definitely not Baga, who in the last few episodes has gotten a ‘rough around the edges’ edit that doesn’t feel particularly true.

Sure, she may have worn a coat to hide the fact a dress zipper was broken on the rain runway, but Baga pulls it all off. It’s part of the appeal and character, and we’ll take an interesting queen over a polished but a little plain one any day — especially given the depth of character that came out during the podcast segment, where Baga revealed she’d only seen her mother a handful of times in the past decade or so.

Their energy last week during the make-over challenge was very odd, to say the least. There’s obviously a lot of pain on both sides from Baga being shipped off to her nan’s as a teen while her mum essentially started a new family, to the point where it’s surprising she did the show at all. Anyone with a fractured relationship to their parents (so, um, everyone) know that attempts of reconciliation often come from a good place but often come out a little warped, like an olive branch with thorns.

Compared to Divina and Baga, we can’t shake that The Vivienne does feel a little too clean as a winner, though it’s all relative. She’s witty, sharp and got a pretty foul sense of humour, though hides it a little where the rest hang it all out. It definitely feels correct to see her win, but ultimately, as we know by now, the real race starts off the show.

It also felt correct to see all the queens return for the show’s in-built Untucked: thankfully they didn’t have any sway in the final judgement, so the kiki acted as a nice wrap-up of the season.

Having them all in one room was a reminder of how incredibly talented and funny these queens are all, even the early outs — Gothy and Scaredy clearly need more cooking time, but there’s a natural charm to both of them, especially Scaredy.  We may just want Gothy to [redacted] us with his rumoured very [redacted redacted].

While we’re being horny, Crystal’s pits did not get enough airtime this episode. WoWPresents+, now that’s a show I’d subscribe for.

It was really lovely to see all the fallen dolls, but we have to give props to Cheryl for giving the most Alyssa Edwards ‘2-in-1’ reveal by unclipping a feather boa construction to reveal an actual dress.

After all the queens return, we find out that Baga won’t win, and The Viv and Divina lip-sync to Wham — and just as she did four years ago, The Vivienne wins over Divina to become a UK ambassador for drag. It’s a cute ending, though the UK once again falters a little in the lip sync, which was fun but lacked that extra energy found on the US version.

Clearly, Charlie Hides wasn’t lying: lip syncing evidently isn’t that essential in the UK scene. On the plus-side, it’s meant that the rest of the show has been top-notch, and ultimately, we’ll take genuinely funny acting challenges above a dip or two.

Drag Race UK is returning next year, and while we’re still absolutely overwhelmed by how big the series is — there will be seven co-current seasons of the show in 2020, thanks to Celebrity, UK, Australia, Canada and Thailand, plus a German version is currently airing, too — we don’t have the fatigue felt after S11.

If these spin-offs all cater to their country’s scene rather than replicating the original show, we could have some really interesting, original television.

We’re still thirsty for more, and while AS5 hasn’t been announced yet, it’s probably just around the corner. The rumoured cast is an interesting blend of early season queens and new favourites, and the slight shift to the show’s format (spoilers here, but be warned) shouldn’t be too gimmicky. Right?????

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RuPaul’s Drag Race streams on Stan.

Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and co-host of Sleepless In Sydney on FBi Radio. He is on Twitter.