After six seasons and a trip to Japan, Netflix’s Queer Eye franchise is taking its message of love, acceptance and regular haircuts to Germany – without the Fab Five that viewers of the US show know and adore. This is a makeover of the makeover show, and it introduces a brand new German fab five: a Fab Fünf, who are there to spend a week with deserving recipients of their care, attention and insights into efficient shelving units.
At first, watching Queer Eye Germany – which launches today – is like visiting an old house long after you have moved out. It looks the same and the structure is just as it was, but the furniture is all different and there’s a photograph of a new family on the wall. Looking at the German hosts is like visiting a seaside waxwork museum, and the Jonathan Van Ness statue is sort of wonky. But it only takes a few moments to adjust to the fact that these are five new people looking at an iPad in a big car on their way to a new town. And it is quite amusing to hear the German language peppered with phrases such as “Go girl!”, “Yas queen”, and, to my surprise, “one-pot”, as in one-pot cooking, which clearly needs no translating.
