Logo's new series "RuPaul's Drag U" follows the self-improvement template but subverts it along the way with self-mocking humor. What's most important is that the participants have a good time while on the show. They do, and the fun is contagious.

In the show, drag queens, under the supervision of the famous cross-dresser RuPaul, teach drab women how to be glamorous and self-confident. The women learn this by dressing and behaving like drag queens themselves.

The level of seriousness is signaled early on when RuPaul informs us that the university is located "deep in the Lake Titicaca Valley." Viewers with a low tolerance for bad puns are advised to stay away.

The premiere, airing tonight at 9 p.m., features three adult "tomboys." Shaya, 37, says her children are ashamed of the way she looks and dresses. Reyna, 26, feels powerless when she wears women's clothes. Linda, 47, says she has never felt beautiful in her life.

Each of the women is assigned a transvestite "professor." First they're taken to the Dragulator, a "highly sophisticated piece of technology" that shows them how they'll look as transvestites and assigns them a drag-queen name, for example, Saline Dijon and Candy Graham.

The women get lessons in walking like a tranny, which is harder than one might think, and dancing, and then start working on their looks. At this point, RuPaul comes in to check on their progress, recalling Tim Gunn's workroom visits in "Project Runway."

When Reyna puts on a tight dress, she says, "I feel like a sausage."

"But do you feel like a powerful sausage?" asks her professor, Jujubee.

Professor Raven gives his/her student, Linda, an instant face-lift using scotch tape.

Along the way, we learn that some of the women have serious problems. Shaya says her marriage is hanging by a thread. Reyna says she has been the victim of sexual abuse. While these revelations add rooting interest, the show wisely refrains from suggesting that the issues will be solved by the end of the hour.

The "draguation ceremony" is a sort of beauty pageant in which the contestants model their new looks on a runway, answer some judges' questions and do a dance-off to "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

Since cattiness seems to be as important in drag life as puns, much of the self-empowerment of the process could be destroyed by the comments of the judges. A drag queen named Lady Bunny tells one contestant that she walked with "the elegance and poise of a grizzly bear."

The winner gets some standard girlie game-show prizes. It's unclear whether the makeup will ever get used.

But the competition isn't the point. As the women dance in their outlandish dresses and wigs, one remembers the primal appeal of playing dress-up: taking a brief vacation from our own identity.

The three tomboys clearly enjoy being a drag queen for a day. Viewers will likely enjoy it almost as much.