erhaps this is arrogance on my part but I had thought, after years of watching, that I was finally reality TV-proof. You know how it is: when the first episode of a competition format is aired, you already know who will make the Top 3, who will Go On A Journey, who will uselessly flop out at the first hurdle, who will be the first major villain (out Week 5) and the second, sleeper agent villain (out Week 8). I know how the sausage is made so completely that reality TV editors cannot possibly fool me any more. I see through the Matrix. I have become television. Except when it comes to RuPaul’s Drag Race UK (Thursday, BBC Three), which has confounded me entirely, in that I cannot possibly predict what is going to happen – and who is going to zig into “reality TV evil” – next. Everyone’s seen at least one episode of Drag Race by now, so I don’t really have to explain too much – 12 drag queens compete as to who can be the best drag queen, doing one “fun challenge” a week (this week they pose for photos while having tennis balls fired at them, for reasons unknown) and then a more sincere runway walk at the end, with the two losers forced into a to-the-death lip-sync – and it’s as much about the sheer artistry of the costumes and inventive interpretation of the broad briefs as it is about people in wig caps doing extravagant things with gauze. It has been going for years in the US, but when mega-formats run and run like this, the question stands: how do you innovate without changing up what makes the original a success? And the answer for this UK spin-off is: make RuPaul chew the words “bangers and mash” up in front of a parade of British queens who, in lieu of polished Stateside glam, all give off a dark energy that suggests they have all, at least once, used their platform shoes to kick out the glass in a bus stop. So in this second series we have early favourites Lawrence Chaney, an astonishingly funny Scottish queen hailing from Glasgow, Ellie Diamond, her Dundee counterpart, a sort of drag wunderkind who makes every outfit by hand, and Tayce, from Newport, who stomps into the dressing room with the swagger of a 90s supermodel. Then you have Tia Kofi who, as a queen, is high-to-mid ranking, but as a behind-the-scenes talking-head action-describer is absolutely unparalleled; and Ginny Lemon, who is what would happen if you killed Su Pollard then resurrected her, for some reason. Other queens will undoubtedly capture your own imaginations – this week’s finale sees them recreate their “home-town heroes”, featuring some very loose interpretations of the geography of a “home town”, and Liz Hurley purring at them all in reverent honour – or jangle darker feelings inside of you, such as A’Whora, a Nottinghamshire queen whom I’m afraid to say I hate. Weird how reality TV can make you do this. Within one little hour of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK I have favourites, unfavourites, and a simmering rivalry with a perfectly nice-seeming drag queen from Worksop (why do I not like A’Whora? What is my problem?). This, I suppose, is the success of the format: you expect to settle in for a nice hour of entertainment, and somehow you leave it with an enemy. Just when I thought I’d completed TV, this happens. I’m not mad about it.