Do you believe there is a little bit of fabulous in all of us? I do not. In fact, I know there is not, because I exist and I check myself optimistically for signs of nascent fabulosity every week; nary a glimmer do I find. But I hope it is true for everyone else. I want it to be true. And so I hope the Family Gorgeous, the troupe of drag queens around whom the new reality show Drag SOS (Channel 4) is structured (poorly, but we will get to that), might find it in their expansive hearts to let me in regardless.

Lill, Asttina Mandella, Cheddar Gorgeous, Anna Phylactic, TeTe Bang and Donna Trump are visions of colourful, confected loveliness. Their makeup, costumes and wigs are monuments to the phenomenal artistry it takes to drag up well. This applies equally to Liquorice Black, but in monochrome – a little aniseed bite amid the delicious bag of pick’n’mix sweeties they evoke.

After a decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race, drag is now virtually mainstream, particularly on the other side of the Atlantic, where the crowned queens of that series can expect to go on to lucrative careers that increasingly include gigs such as Starbucks and McDonald’s adverts and their own makeup lines.

Our Mancunian gang, however, have set their sights a little more locally: they are on a mission to bring glamour, cheer and maybe even a little liberation to the hidebound folk of England at a rate of three punters an episode.

In the opening episode, there is Abby, a 33-year-old single mother of two children with ADHD; 21-year-old art student Nico, who has experienced bulimia and a mental breakdown that has taken her from extrovertion to rock-bottom self-esteem; and Shaun. Shaun is the father of Owen, who came out to his parents a few years ago in his teens. “I had pretty caveman thoughts,” says Shaun. “What did I do wrong? Did he have an experience at school that turned him gay? That’s where I was.” Now he is eager to take part in the project to bond with Owen, who has a drag persona of his own, and to make up for all the times he tried to interest the boy in his own hobbies of football and … well, just football really.

After the introductions, however, it all becomes a bit messy; the producers try to do too much at once, unable to decide whether it is a general makeover show, a specific look at the construction and benefits of drag or a full-on emotional rollercoaster following the punters’ and the queens’ journeys. The result is something that falls unsatisfactorily between three stools.

The most inspiring story – of Shaun and his relationship with Owen – is frustratingly obscured by unnecessary clips of the searches for other potential dragees and other filler. There are some very touching moments between Shaun and Anna. Anna sees in Sean the ability to let love overcome difference that she does not seem to have experienced with her own father – but the differences are left unexplored. The transformations and final performances arrive almost out of the blue and with no sense of what the art has brought to life.

It seems a waste of a lot of material – and of unusually articulate presenters – that was clearly there and just needed shaping into something meaningful. What did remain, however, was the sense of an enterprise suffused with kindness. The queens so obviously had each others’ backs in everything, and were out – in public and in private with their protegees – to share the benefits drag has brought them. That kindness, the essential gentleness with which the whole venture was approached was a rare enough treat in reality-show terms, which are too often some variant of bullying, and deeply welcome when set against the wider backdrop of current events.

There’s a wider conversation to be had, I suspect, about what may be lost when a counterculture like drag becomes culture – does it destroy a space for certain sensibilities, or create a wider one? Does everyone really win when performance art becomes commerce? Does it mean that all forms of drag become acceptable or does it mean the rise of only one approved sort? And where does that leave the rest? But for here and now, Drag SOS certainly does no harm and even if it only creates a little space for kindness on our screens, it may do some good.