Drag Race Holland

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 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.

I've seen every episode produced by Ru Paul's Drag Race. Given that this is the first and second season, these Queen's are far more talented to that of the U. S. and Britain. I know the U. S. version started a long time ago and drag culture has progressed, but this definitely tops the Dutch version. The second season is a lot better hell yes! The judges aren't great but they can become great. Fred was a fantastic option, I love him in the show. He is a great and loving host. The girls clearly have talent. They can embrace their drag better because they grew up in a country that was one of the first in the world to legalize gay marriage. The Holland Queen's have much more experience being in communities that are more accepting of drag. I'm sure they won't hold ANYTHING back!

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.

This is the first time I have ever posted a review.The queens are amazing, their skills are extraordinary and I have seen some of the best outfits in first four episodes. Maybe some of the humor gets lost in the translation but still, not unfunny. I gave the show a 9 only because the production needs to do a better job.

Edit: Judges are even worse than in Canada's Drag race. It's so sad because a lot of high quality queens are either gone or not winning the game and some of the borring queens with a lot of instagram followers (I guess f* the producers too) are getting ahead.