It’s a New Year and there’s heaps of new TV to devour. We dive into the new Season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, The Traitors UK and look at an upcoming documentary on Take That.
Don’t read any further if you don’t want to see the spoilers.
RuPaul’s Drag Race returned with it’s eighteenth season, and to mix it up a little the show began in the workroom with mood lighting. First we saw previous winners Raja, Bob the Drag Queen and Kim Chi powering the lights by cycling, and it seems they could only go fast enough to supply some dim lighting.
One by one the fourteen new queens piled into the room, Athena Dion led a contingent from Miami. Myki Meeks, Mia Starr, Juice Love Dion, Discord Adams also hail from the land of orange juice.
Larger than life Kenya Pleaser shared that she began her career doing impersonations of Lizzo. Jane Don’t is a comedy queen who says she’s inspired by ‘old skool’ funny ladies like Bette Midler and Joan Rivers – well that made us feel old, we thought she was going to go with Lucille Ball or Mae West.
Nini Coco hails from Denver Colorado, and we feel everyone from Perth should go for her, because we got the Gay Games. Nini loves a rainbow. Unlike Discord Adams who declared they hate the rainbow.
Vita VonTesse Starr from Alabama comes from the world of pageants. Briar Blush was bold and brassy, and shared that she only ever has jet black hair and the “quality of her drag is undisputed” – time will tell. Los Angeles based Darlene Mitchell is all big blonde hair and embraces a country trash aesthetic, and prefers to just do drag at home as a ‘bedroom queen’.
Mandy Mango described herself as a Filipina Fruity Booty, and came dressed as a nurse, out of drag she works as a nurse in HIV and sexual health. Ciara Myst is all inspired by sci-fi and speaks in the third person.
Energetic DD Fuego hails from New York City and has been doing drag for 15 years. Like most of this year’s contestants she’s over 30, in fact their average age is 32.
Soon RuPaul arrived and encouraged the queens to scream out and bring the lights on. For the first challenge the screaming continued with each contestant challenged to scream loudly while cavorting with a troupe of hunky dancers. Kenya Pleaser was the winner.
For the major challenge the queens were tasked with making outfits from random materials found in the drag race vault, and impress guest judge Cardi B. While she won the mini-challenge Kenya faced an additional challenge when she forgot to grab any fabric, then she tried to make an outfit out of hats, but they fell apart.
When they hit the runway it mostly came together, there was high praise for Jane Don’t, Nini Coco and Vita VonTesse Starr. But Kenya Pleaser was declared to be bland, there were mixed thoughts about Juicy Love Dion and Mandy Mango was labeled messy and rumply.
After Cardi B dropped backstage with her glam squad of Erika La’Pearl and Tokyo Sltylez to share some life advice, they returned to the stage and
Kenya Pleaser and Mandy Mango were the bottom two, but RuPaul announced there would be no elimination during the first episode. Top performers Nini Coco and Vita VonTesse Starr were asked to face off for the chance of a cash prize – a lip-sync for the win.
Catch RuPaul’s Drag Race on Stan.
The Traitors UK is off and racing
The fourth season of The Traitors UK is off and racing and three episodes have already arrived, and the faithful have managed to knock off a traitor at only their second round table.
Barrister Hugo gave a big speech at breakfast and didn’t make it to dinner time. His demise came after Judy was banished on the first night, nursery school teacher Netty was murdered, and retired Navy officer Ben was also bumped off.
Traitor Stephen also messed up and got himself on a short list of potential suspect when Ben was murdered.
There’s so much going on in this series, we know Roxy is keeping it a secret that Judy was her mother, and Netty and Ross were acquaintances, but are there other relationships?
Amanda is not telling anyone she was a police detective. Harriet is keeping stum that she was a barrister and is now a successful crime writer. Do they all have secrets? It was suggested that Hugo and Amanda might be a couple, but Amanda responded saying she’s actually a lesbian.
The show introduced a big twist with the secret traitor and its looks like we’re on the precipice of discovering their identity, or maybe only surviving traitors Rachel and Stephen are going to see their face. We know it can’t be James, Maz or Reece, because they were on the Secret Traitor’s short list for murder.
On top of all the conniving and scheming, we’re also loving that fashionista traitor Stephen is serving runway looks at every opportunity, and fans have tracked down his Instagram. Episode three’s artwork challenge also showed us that Faraaz can deliver a blue ice look at the drop of a hat.
We’re going to take a stab and say that Ellie, the quiet psychologist, is the secret traitor. Get up to speed with the latest series on 10Play.
Netflix announce screening date for Take That documentary series
The documentary series on Irish band Boyzone was captivating, now there’s a series about fellow 90’s group Take That!
The series launches on Netflix on Tuesday 27th January and featuring 35 years of “rare archive, never-before-seen footage, personal material” and brand new interviews with remaining band members Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen.
There’s also archival interviews with Robbie Williams and Jason Orange. While the band had a huge run in the 90’s before splitting, since reforming they’ve continued to be successful in the UK.
We’re going to tune in just to see what they say about that saucy video for Do What U Like, and we’d like to see an in-depth study into just how many boys realised they were gay when Mark flashed his abs in the video for video for Could It Be Magic.
