The First Season of Drag Race Holland shows some promise. The cast is not only talented, but also diverse, showing not only Dutch queens but also a couple of South American queens. The production is certainly more modest given its infancy and filmed in a smaller country during the pandemic. While the show does stay true to the roots of the Drag Race franchise with snatch game, musical, acting and design challenges, there could be more room of originality, featuring more Dutch and Benelux culture in the mini and maxi challenges.
The weighting formula of the maxi challenge and runway is also different, with the latter outweighing the former. Therefore, at times, after watching the maxi challenge, one would have thought a specific queen deserved to win the episode based on her stellar performance but to be surprised a queen with a stunning runway look to snatch the win from the deserving queen.
The runway looks are really good for some queens like the incredibly polished Envy Peru, the crazily original queen, ChelseaBoy, and Sederginne, a comedy queen who proves that great comedic timing can go with great sense of style. I believe the show can benefit from better and more consistent judging where the maxi challenge weighs more than the runway look. I look forward to the coming seasons.
