Fans of Ten’s cat-and-mouse reality game show Hunted could have been forgiven for thinking they were watching Drag Race Down Under during Monday’s episode, as the four remaining fugitives all leaned heavily on drag to try to evade the Hunters.
After a season of contestants donning dodgy wigs and op shop dresses, leave it to friends Jake and Rob – who’ve been running rings around the Hunters since the start of the game – to bring some truly unrecognizable disguises.
Rob, a hairdresser and make-up artist, got he and police officer Jake into very convincing drag for their next outing, knowing that stepping out in public as themselves was just too risky.
Their mission: To go to a local pub and befriend some strangers, who would hopefully take them in separately for the night as they went their separate ways for the final stage of the game.
And Rob had come prepared, putting them both in wigs, make-up, breast plates and even facial prosthetics:
Cut to Jake and Rob in full drag, blending in very well as they sipped cocktails with a group of girls at a Footscray pub – one of whom announced, “You can come stay with us if you like.”
One complaint – hunted brushed over this undercover operation, showing us barely more than 30 seconds of Jake and Rob in drag at the pub before we skipped to the next scene.
It raised a lot of questions: How exactly did two large men in drag convince some strangers at the pub to let them crash? Release the extended pub scene, Have!
Also relying on the power of drag were contestants Stathi and Matt, who had fled to Daylesford’s LGBTI ChillOut Festival with a plan to meet a drag queen friend who would get them frocked up so they could move around the town in disguise.
Unfortunately, the Hunters intercepted their meeting (perhaps meeting a large, purple-wigged drag queen at the local pub wasn’t the best plan to evade detection), capturing Matt and leaving an emotional Stathi on the run by himself.
That means just Stathi, Rob and Jake are left in the game as the show heads towards tonight’s finale – will all, or indeed any, of them make it to the ‘extraction point’ and share in the $100,000 winnings?
Hunted concludes 7.30pm tonight on Ten.
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