There are niche TV comedies, and then there’s Smoggie Queens. The Middlesbrough-set, drag queen-adjacent comedy is based on creator and star Phil Dunning’s life, and its first series was a singular mix of Teesside banter and allusions to UK hun culture. It was proudly weird and queer – a little Diane Morgan, a little Lily Savage – with camp cameos to boot. Steph McGovern (as herself) was the nemesis of Dunning’s prickly protagonist Dickie (their feud was established while working together on the deli counter at Morrisons), while Drag Race’s Michelle Visage played against type as a pernickety office manager named Elaine. When it wasn’t totally silly, it was also rather touching; among Dickie’s rag-tag crew of mates was “baby gay” Stewart (Elijah Young), who was struggling to come out to his family, and Mam (Mark Benton), the bewigged mother figure of the group who, we learned, was estranged from her teenage son.
This second six-episode run is an even more boutique proposition than the first – frequently funny but also frequently bizarre. Episode one is a case in point: Dickie and friends lose a white rabbit in a carpet warehouse – cue some Alice in Wonderland visuals and Stewart hallucinating that Dickie is a bunny, too. The rabbit is called Andrea, leading to such ridiculous lines as “Howay Andrea, ya silly knobhead!!!”, yelled by Mam. The high street retailer Dunelm is used as a punchline, and one character wonders whether the rabbit might be gay, too.
