Hulu’s Drag Me to Dinner is a pseudo competition series that serves up inedible dishes from ineffable queens. Series creators — and dinner party judgers — Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka assembled a cast of 40 superstar drag queens and dropped them in the most dangerous work room of all: a kitchen. Don’t worry: the cooking isn’t as important as the comedy. The question is, does this far out idea encompassing food prep, decorating, and entertaining ever congeal into a delicious treat? Or should drag queens stick to serving on the stage instead of serving dinner?
DRAG ME TO DINNER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: After a nice little teaser encompassing the magic and mayhem of the season, Neil Patrick Harris gathers host Murray Hill and fellow judgers Haneefah Wood, Bianca Del Rio, and David Burtka around and… well, he gives them the gist… and it’s also the most pilot-y line.
The Gist / Most Pilot-y Line: “We’re about to shoot the first episode of Drag Me to Dinner, the best show about dueling parties thrown by pairs of drag queens that the world has ever known!” Leave it to the drag queen cooking/decorating/comedy/reality competition show to completely blend all of our categories together.
For the premiere episode, Drag Me to Dinner pits Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme against Sherry Vine and Jackie Beat in a competition to see who can throw the best tropical kiki bash. Their attempts will be judged in three areas: food and drink, design and decor, and entertainment and overall vibe. May the greatest queens win!
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The most obvious point of reference is Netflix’s Nailed It!, another cooking competition where the skills are questionable and comedy comes first. The show’s mission statement — letting teams of queens create immersive experiences — also bears a bit of resemblance to a recurring challenge on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, the one that gave us Club 96.
More than all those, though, Drag Me to Dinner’s ferocious commitment to camp and gleeful anarchy reminds me most of the cable TV shows of the mid-to-late ’90s — your Mystery Science Theater 3000s, your Talk Soups, your Space Ghost Coast to Coasts, your UK Whose Line Is It Anywayses. Drag Me to Dinner feels like the kinda show you would watch at 2 a.m. on TBS in 1998 and then try desperately to explain to people the following morning while they ask, “Are you sure you weren’t just passed out?”
Sex and Skin: In the grand tradition of Drag Race’s Pit Crew, Drag Me to Dinner offers the queens a helping hand via some hunky handy helpers.
Parting Shot: As the losing duo feel up the handy helpers, host Murray Hill signs off with his signature catchphrase: “Showbiz!”
Sleeper Star: 2023: The Year of Murray Hill! Immediately following the Season 2 finale of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, the show that introduced the legendary drag king to a new audience, Hill arrives on Hulu as the host of a camp-as-hell competition show. And as much as I love Hill’s performance as Fred Rococo, it’s a blast seeing Hill so fully in his element, serving retro masculine glamour (I want… all… of those suits) and slinging zingers.
Our Take: There’s no shortage of drag content to stream nowadays, and I’m not just talking about the constant roll out of Drag Race seasons both global and domestic. We’ve seen queens sing, give people makeovers, go on a road trip, appear in Oscar movies, appear in Christmas movies, and even renovate a motel. We’ve even seen queens compete on Nailed It! That’s why it’s so remarkable that Drag Me to Dinner not only feels so fresh, but it also feels so uniquely drag. Also no one can complain about there being too many drag queen shows until there are just as many drag queen shows as there are shows starring white men with 5 o’clock shadow who play by their own rules.
Drag Me to Dinner’s key ingredient has to be the illusion of a format. Drag is all about exposing and breaking norms, so the show feels so thoroughly drag because it breaks the format at every turn with “behind-the-scenes” interstitials and a barrage of bits within bits. Why does the cooking portion have a trivia segment? Why not? The show is truly a dragged out version of the kind of shows that run in weekend marathons on Food Network, with all of their peculiar peccadilloes heightened to absurdity.
And then there’s just the sheer amount of drag artistry on display in every episode, from the four competitors to host Murray Hill, even to Neil Patrick Harris (who plays the prize spokesmodel) and David Burtka (who meddles with the queens as Sue Chef). You wouldn’t think it because of its presumed focus on party planning, but Drag Me to Dinner actually allows all of the queens to showcase their talents without the pressure of an actual competition. Drag queens are personalities, and those personalities are allowed to really spark against ridiculous tasks like making a sandcastle cake or a cheese volcano. And since the queens get to stage their own entertainment, you also get to see them do what they actually do best. It’s the best of both worlds.
The only real tweak I’d make to Drag Me to Dinner would be the episode length. Granted, I want to spend as much time with everyone involved as I can, but the format feels stretched a little thin at 43 minutes. The show could probably lose 13 minutes and be an even zippier watch. But am I really going to complain about spending more time watch DeLa, Jinkx, Sherry, and Jackie frantically banter and bicker? Nah! In fact, the show’s length and segment-focused format actually makes it the perfect kind of show to put on during your own dinner party for people to dip in and dip out of between chats and refills. Whether you watch 4 minutes or 40, Drag Me to Dinner is a delight.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Drag Me to Dinner is the party show of the summer.