Drag Race Holland

The show in itself is good, the queen's talented, the challenges fun and the drama (partly staged) fun to watch. The judges though, they seem to like or dislike something at random, if the queen they like exceeds at the main challenge it's one of the main judgement points, if she doesn't it's not. Would have loved to see a fair competition...

Won't do any spoilers, but this season is rigged.

Despite the production improving from season 1, decisions to eliminate queens are completely random and incoherent. By the end of the season you realise they have been protecting one queen who's doing all badly, and they start contradicting their own arguments over and over to eliminate her competition so she can win the finale. RIGGED.

The production of this show is very bad. But what actually killed it for me are the judges, especially the host. They are so unlikable.

The host acts like RuPaul up to his catchphrases, which makes it so inauthentic. They even translate some parts to Dutch, literally, which makes no sense at all. The moment the host thought he was the big shot, I turned off the tv. He is so rude to the contestants and even insults them, like wth?

Cancelling the host might be this show's only salvation. Stopped watching after 5 episodes, couldn't stand it anymore. "Daaaag schaaaat". - Horrible, really!

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.

The show proves that changing an already solid, well-rounded formula does more bad than good. Production should takes notes on film, comedic, and general hosting and challenge cues from the US edition. There's a disconnect between Drag Race US and Drag Race Holland that not even the 30 second RuMail segments narrated by the shows creator and Drag icon, RuPaul, can save it from a sinking ship. The show lacks comedic value, fails simple video editing that both fans and critics know and love, and sound editing that just seems out of place the majority of the time. Only time will tell whether or not production learns from their mistakes and stays truer with the flagship model for their future iterations come renewal.