The second series of Queen of the Universe, the drag queen singing competition hosted by Graham Norton, has something unspoken about it: it is like a show about something else, camouflaged as classic, competition-format reality TV. The contestants are all so nice to one another, so supportive; Norton is so nice; the judges are all so nice. Take the niceness of Bake Off and multiply it by a thousand, and you are still nowhere close to how much the contestants are rooting for one another, even though they would all clearly appreciate the $250,000 prize for themselves.
I ask Norton if he ever wishes that there was a bit more grit in the oyster? “Every now and again, there’s a little bit of grit in the oyster and it makes for great telly,” he says, adding: “It makes me so uncomfortable.” But then, to be real for a second: “I think the grit in the oyster is often the world around the drag performers. There’s so much grit out there; let’s just be nice shiny oysters in here. We had one contestant from India … well, a lot of them are trying to perform in countries where there really isn’t a safe space for them to do it. In season one, I hadn’t thought that through, stupidly. It broke my heart when they came around the corner into the studio with the audience cheering, the lights … It must have been like a waking dream – that they landed in this place, a huge mainstream television show with seemingly a limitless budget.”
