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There are the TV shows, and then there are the Smoggie Queens. The Middlesbrough-set, drag queen-neighbourhood drama is based on the life of producer and star Phil Dunning, and its first series was a mix of Teesside banter and commentary. UK hun culture. It was proudly exotic and exotic – a young Diane Morgan, a young Lily Savage – with boot camps. Steph McGovern (as herself) was Dunning’s arch-rival Dickie (their feud was set when they worked together on the deli counter at Morrisons), while Drag Race’s Michelle Visage played against type as a nasty office manager named Elaine. While it wasn’t completely stupid, it was also effective; among Dickie’s group of friends was the “gay kid” Stewart (Elijah Young), who was struggling to come out of his family, and Mam (Mark Benton), the stupid mother of the group who, we learn, was estranged from her teenage son.
This second six-episode run is even more fun than the first – just as funny and weird. The first paragraph is an example: Dickie and his friends lost a white rabbit in a carpet store – look at pictures of Alice in Wonderland and Stewart sees that Dickie is a rabbit. The rabbit is named Andrea, which leads to silly lines like “Howay Andrea, silly knobhead!!!”, shouted by Mam. A Dunelm street vendor is used as a punchline, and one character wonders if a rabbit might be gay.
Similar to other BBC Three jokes of the day – check out Mawan Rizwan’s Wateror Things You Should Dodesigned by Lucia Keskin – Smoggie Queens delights in its appearance. In the second part of this opening double bill, Stewart goes on his first date, to an Italian restaurant in the North East of England. There is an official coleslaw at every place; Dickie in short is a sugar baby; Mam finds herself in the job of waiting and opening the toilet; and the whole thing ends in an ugly food fight. If you had turned on the TV at any time during that half hour, you might have been surprised.
But maybe that’s the goal. Smoggie Queens has a narrative thread, but it’s mostly a warm, sarcastic comedy — the show’s inside jokes that fans will love, and maybe not too OTT. One story takes place at a charity football game called Nipple Aid for people with extra areolae (word: “not everyone has two”), which features celebrity impersonators instead of celebrities. Another episode centers on the Mr Teesside Beauty Pageant – “a competition based on beauty, talent and tumors” – where Stewart is a contestant, despite Dickie insisting that he is “the epitome of a twisted rat man”.
Sometimes, however, it reaches a level of great comedy gold. The story of Dickie’s LGBTQ+ network that was hijacked by the pride office is interesting, especially because of the “straight” choices, Agadoo, Born Slippy and the Fratellis’ Chelsea Dagger show the scandals of Dickie’s highly ranked group. Likewise, the incredibly silly confusion surrounding the parallels between Lucinda (Alexandra Mardell) and soccer player Pablo Corzello (also played by Mardell, but voiced by Spanish actor Vidal Sancho) had me doubled over.
There is also a more poignant side, as we learn more about the marriage of Mam and her son, but it is always more difficult – Dunning seems to be careful not to turn his show into one that focuses on sadness or discrimination. Instead, those themes are carefully, humorously woven into the material, often through Dickie’s careless imagination. “Not many people know this, but I also had a hard time leaving my family”, he says in one episode, desperate to ask for mercy from his ex, who reminds him that he was taken to London by his parents to see Mamma Mia! of music. “Yes, Harrison,” he agrees. “But I wanted to see Miss Saigon!”
The final episode – crass, buttressed by Dickie’s false American accent and a GCSE comedy show for a bored home crowd – won’t please anyone. But the Smoggie Queens were not happy about it. The type of sitcom, the type of secret society, people who like it will like it. And – at least – they can leave feeling seen again.
