EXCLUSIVE: Creatives behind upcoming BBC comedy Smoggie Queens have credited RuPaul’s Drag Race UK with clearing the path for more shows about queer communities across the nation.
Phil Dunning, who created and stars in the Hat Trick-produced show alongside the likes of Peaky Blinders star Charlotte Riley and Mark Benton, said a decade ago the series about drag queens in the north east of England may have struggled to get a greenlight.
Now into its sixth season, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK launched in 2019 and has consistently been one of BBC Three’s top-rated shows, catapulting the careers of the likes of The Vivienne and Baga Chipz and carving out space in the national conversation about drag. The majority of its contestants come from outside of London.
“Drag Race has done amazing things for the queer community,” Dunning told Deadline. “It’s shone such a spotlight on drag and made us think that these people are interesting and fun. And 10 years ago there wasn’t such a focus on regional locations.”
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Smoggie Queens follows Middlesborough native Dickie (Dunning) and friends including drag queen Mam (Benton), self-styled hun Lucinda (Alexandra Mardell), awkward Sal (Patsy Lowe) and newcomer Stewart (Elijah Young) as they navigate love, life and their pride for a town that feels neglected in its own little corner of the UK.
In a casting boon, the show landed a heavy hitter in Riley as support alongside Michelle Visage, who is a weekly judge on RuPaul and is adored by the queer community. Visage plays a “dowdy” office assistant called Elaine and Dunning said she “was totally up for anything we threw at her.”
Chris Jones, who is producing for Hat Trick, said the existence of Smoggie Queens “is its own statement to queer spaces.”
In the past, he said it felt like there was a ‘one in one out’ approach to UK TV shows about the queer community but this has improved in recent years, with the likes of Mawaan Rizwan’s Juice about a gay man navigating work, life and relationships recommissioned by the BBC around the time Smoggie Queens was announced.
“Queers are not this niche group to tap into anymore but have entered the mainstream,” he added. “Maybe [Smoggie Queens] wouldn’t have got off the ground before but Drag Race has really helped with that broad mainstream.”
Writing what you know
Dunning also compared Smoggie Queens in scope to another Hat Trick-made show, Derry Girls, but at the beginning his plan was very different. The stand-up comic started penning Smoggie Queens when the pandemic struck in 2020 and live comedy shut down but initially Dunning wanted to play a rich, narcissistic character who made his millions as a child film star. Jones was taken by the hilarity of the scripts but gave Dunning the evergreen advice of writing about what he knew.
“It was a bit weird before, it wasn’t very relatable,” said Dunning.
The setting was moved closer to the creator’s hometown and the characters became more reflective of his lived experience. Dunning said he wasn’t daunted about starring in his own show as he was used to playing the character in stand-up.
“The BBC was doing its Comedy Festival in Newcastle and Sauron’s eye of comedy was on the north east so when this meeting with Phil happened I thought it would be great to tee something up,” explained Jones.
Fast forward some years and Hat Trick International is launching sales at MIPCOM with an event Sunday night. Jones said he imagines the U.S., Australia and several European territories could be interested in buying the show, although he joked about the difficulty of dubbing the Middlesborough accent into other languages.
He also floated the idea of Smoggie Queens working as a scripted format, reworked for other regional queer communities around the world.
“We loved how this wasn’t a metrocentric place,” he added. “It’s a small queer community in a seemingly out-of-the-way town. I’d love it to transfer to those kinds of places in Europe.”