From self declared ‘Meghan stan’. Even they can see the folly of this endeavour.
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/with-love-meghan-markle-netflix-barefoot-contessa-martha-stewart-b1202748.html
“that means embracing an all-American approach to the hustle that British viewers will definitely find gauche. Our kitchens are not big enough to host a five-aside football match. We don’t have gardens large enough for a small holding. And Brits certainly don’t find aspirational content like this enervating. Even sainted Nigella has the foresight to pretend she lives in a modest home with a tiny patio when filming her escapist food porn.
With Love, Meghan, is obviously a highly produced branding exercise – just like William and Kates video. But where House Cambridge is still selling the British public the monarchy, With Love, Meghan asks us to buy into her world of luxury Montecito living. The obvious tie-in will be her long-heralded brand American Riviera Orchard. But almost a year since it launched last March we are yet to see a single pot of jam or monogrammed napkin go on sale. I had high hopes that American Riviera Orchard would be a saner answer to Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina eggs and exploding candles in terms of celebrity lifestyle shilling. Currently it looks like it’s going the way of Blake Lively’s Preserve or Reese Witherspoon’s Draper James (RIP).
I also fear that the Instagram influencer shtick is getting tired. Peonies and flat lay charcuterie/nibbles/cheese/butter boards have been done to death. It’s Meghan’s pre-royalty lifestyle blog, The Tig, blown up to epic proportions – well, as epic as eight 33-minute-long episodes can be. She had three million followers on Instagram before she got engaged to Harry and her social media presence was wiped by Royal decree. But that was in 2017, and the online landscape has changed dramatically. Home cooking from scratch in spotless outfits for content has been colonised by the TikTok trad wives. We don’t need another Ballerina Farm or Nara Smith – if Meghan even breathes a word about raw milk even I may have to admit my admiration has been misplaced.
Even if Meghan didn’t want to get stuck into the thorny topic of, say, American food deserts and the wild nutritional inequality of her home country, I hope she at least visits a soup kitchen instead of spending every episode ensconced in an elitist fantasy world of white linen and kitchen gardens. Or else she will give her haters yet more ammunition.”