‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ Season 4 premiere recap: Absolutely fabulous

If there’s one word I’d use to describe the RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 4 premiere, it would be “competent.”

Readers of my Canada’s Drag Race recaps might think that’s an insult, considering how I criticized the most recent season of that spin-off for the lack of camp value. But I actually mean it as a compliment here—mostly. After Season 3 was ultimately a misfire, I’m looking for Drag Race UK to settle back into itself a bit. This premiere indicates that settling is the plan; it actually feels like it could be a mid-series Drag Race U.S. premiere. The judges are comfortable, the format is set and everything feels in its place.

But the other edge of that sword, of course, is a sense of complacency. At this point, any Drag Race UK queen can come in ready to present two runway looks for the first challenge—the categories may change, but the format does not. There are even jokes made in this premiere about Drag Race UK’s predictability, most notably the reference to the franchise’s “Brighton curse” that befell Joe Black and Anubis in previous seasons.

Will herstory repeat itself once again this go-around? The good news is, there are some clear indications in this premiere that in small ways, the series is growing. I do wonder if it might take bigger steps to fully blossom as a franchise, however. And that’s the story I think we’ll be tracking most closely this season as we embark on a new recapping journey. Join us, won’t you?

Entrances galore! Danny Beard is the first in, and proudly notes that she will be the first bearded queen on a RuPaul’s Drag Race season. There are a couple of firsts in this group, including the first South African queen on Drag Race UK (Starlet) and the first trans woman to compete on the British series (Dakota Schiffer). There seemed to be a clear eye in casting this year to representing a more diverse view of British drag, one that includes a British-Chinese queen (Le Fil) and a Caribbean queen (Black Peppa). 

Of course, we’ve seen diverse casts on UK seasons before. It really comes down to whether the show gives them the space to perform and not do anything drastic, like, oh, let’s say, eliminate two fan favourites in one episode just because. (Yes, I’m still annoyed by the Choriza May-River Medway double sashay.) And I will admit to being slightly concerned at how this premiere doles the screen time: a lot of it goes to British drag legends Danny and Cheddar Gorgeous, at the expense of some of the queens about whom we have more to learn.

But it’s early! And with such strong entrance looks—my favourite is Peppa’s mask reveal and easily twirlable ponytail—we already have a solid sense of this whole cast. Kudos to Drag Race UK for giving us such extensive intro packages for the queens, too; that goes a long way to properly meeting queens when there’s still an elimination in the premiere.

After entrances and the mini-challenge (more on that in the final thoughts), we get the customary de-dragging and re-dragging segments, which are as standard as they come. This is not UK’s fault necessarily, but it’s hard to get that invested in the mirror moments on this show coming off of Canada’s Drag Race, which so frequently provides raw, real drama during the preparation segments. Especially while we’re still learning about these new queens, it’s tough to get too deep with any one queen. Which brings me to another point: if I were on one of these shows, you couldn’t pry my backstory out of me with the jaws of life in the first episode. I am absolutely not giving you footage of me crying to be used when I could still go first! You’ll get that when I sit down with Michelle Visage and Ru for my Tic Tac chat, and no sooner!

Anyway, let’s move on to the part of the show we’ve all been waiting for: the runway! Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous fame is our guest judge, and she is goddamn perfect. Her critiques are well made and insightful without ever going too negative for the sake of it. She strikes exactly the right tone, and you can almost feel Michelle and Graham Norton doing their best to keep pace with her. The result is both a strong first runway and a really strong first set of critiques, which goes a long way to making this episode enjoyable despite a familiar format.

The categories this time around are a tribute to the BBC in honour of its 100th birthday, “BBC Keeping It 100,” and a signature drag category, “Ru Are You?” I will say, I vastly prefer these to the hometown drag categories of seasons past. And the less we say about the “My Favourite Things” runway, the better. We should’ve known something was going wrong with that season the second Ella Vaday claimed her favourite thing was the Pride flag.

Tops on the runway are Gothy Kendoll drag relative Sminty Drop, who outplaces Gothy thanks to a pair of very strong runway looks, and Starlet, with whom Ru seems particularly smitten. I actually assume after critiques that Starlet has this win in the bag, based on how flowery Ru’s critiques for the young South African queen are. But there’s a tell in the judging: Ru notes how “shy” Starlet seems. So even though she gets the lion’s share of praise, there’s just enough holding her back from the victory.

Instead, the win goes to Black Peppa, and I could not be more excited. I thought for certain the second Peppa’s (gorgeous!) chocolate crown fell off on the runway, she was doomed. But as the judges note in critiques, she does a terrific job of not letting it register for a second. She continues on with her gorgeous runway walk, and lets her stunning purple dress and body makeup do the talking. Paired with her draggy, out-of-the-box take on Mr. Blobby, and she’s the queen who shows the most talent and range on the runway this week. A well-deserved win for Peppa.

Sadly, two queens must battle it out to avoid being first out, and they are Dakota and Geri Halliwell impersonator Just May. Copper Topp, a self-described “feel-good ginger of drag,” is the third bottom-placer, but she avoids the lip sync after an emotional runway presentation of her “GINGER FAGULOUS” look. I can’t say I disagree with the judging: May’s looks range from the too stiff (her take on the Queen Victoria bust from EastEnders) to too on the nose (her Ru Are You? look decked out in her own face), while both of Dakota’s are far too simple for this crowd.

In fact, I’ll give the judges high marks: this is by far the most I can remember agreeing with the UK panel in years, outside of UK vs. The World. (Say what you will about that season, but it featured what was perhaps Ru’s most clear-eyed, impartial judgment in series herstory.) I want to give most of the credit for that to Joanna, who really is such a star this week—her calling Dakota’s sad train on her second look “so humble” is hilarious—but I also hope this is a sign that the judges are looking to make the critiques this season more coherent. UK Season 3 really suffered from poor judging; remember when Vanity Milan was all-but-explicitly put into the bottom two for her performance in previous weeks instead of in that week itself? Season 4 needs to gain some credibility back for the UK panel.

The lip sync to Mabel’s “Let Them Know” is nothing spectacular, but Dakota pretty clearly wins it. May admits she’s not a great lip syncer after, and nothing she does in the performance could be submitted as evidence to counter that claim. Dakota, meanwhile, commands the stage well, and earns her spot in the Final 11. (Jeez, we’ve got a ways to go, don’t we?) May sashays away, which is a delightful rhyme.

Overall, I like this premiere, but I’m not sure it does enough to convince me the series is back on track after UK Season 3. Granted, I’d have said the same about Canada’s Drag Race’s Season 2 premiere, and that ultimately turned out to be one of my favourite seasons. There are enough good signs here that I’m cautiously optimistic about what comes next. For the time being, I feel okay, hun.

Untucking our final thoughts

✨ Danny makes a very clear distinction in her introduction: she says she is “the first-ever bearded drag queen to be judged by RuPaul.” No Madame Madness erasure here! (Or, if you want to go all the way back to The Switch, Marie Laveau!)

✨ “Fuck salt, ’cause Peppa’s here” might be my new favourite entrance line on Drag Race. Can you tell I’m a Peppa stan yet?

✨ Similarly, “Get fucked” from May might be my favourite exit line in years. (Tough to compete with “Miss Vanjie” for the all-time title, though.)

✨ God bless the international series for keeping the photo shoot mini-challenges alive when U.S. Drag Race is so inconsistent with them. This season, the shoot is a tribute to the Spice Girls’ entrance during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London. Can you believe that was a decade ago? So much has changed! J.K. Rowling was prominently featured in that opening ceremony! Wild to remember. Anyway, Peppa wins this challenge too, and it is well-deserved.

✨ “Anya Taylor-Joy in a Valentino campaign” is perhaps the runway description least aware of what RuPaul and Michelle Visage are going to respond to since Aja once raved about her Princess Disastah look on Season 9. I don’t think it’s fair that Drag Race is most prominently judged by people whose cultural reference points are literally decades old, but if you’re gonna go on the show, it’s probably wise to remember that!

✨ Couldn’t help but burst out laughing at Pixie’s confessional about Copper’s second look: “Copper Topp’s look is ugly. But you know what else is ugly? Homophobia.”

✨ The “Yass-tonbury Festival” coming next week means we are getting our earliest girl group challenge in Drag Race UK herstory. On the one hand, this has become a signature challenge of sorts, and I understand wanting to give as many queens as possible a crack at it. On the other, the challenge structure usually requires that all members of the winning group are declared winners of the task. Will up to six RuPeter Badges be given out next week? That’s inflating the win economy, to say the least.

✨ Is this a safe space to admit at episode’s end, I felt a strange pang of nostalgia for Ru telling the girls that shantay means stay? You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

✨On a much more sombre note, I was devastated to learn that UK Season 2 queen Cherry Valentine died this past weekend. Cherry was not only a talented drag artist, but also worked on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic as a nurse, both during the Season 2 filming hiatus and after. Her time on Drag Race may have been short, but her story was an impactful one, opening up about being raised in a Traveller community both on the show and in the BBC special Cherry Valentine: Gypsy Queen and Proud. To say she’s gone too soon is an understatement; my thoughts are with her family and loved ones during their time of grieving.

The next episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK will be available to stream on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 4 p.m. EDT on WOW Presents Plus in the U.S. and on Crave in Canada. You can subscribe to our drag newsletter, Wig!, for exclusive Drag Race content delivered straight to your inbox every Tuesday afternoon.