Allison Pearson, Telegraph:
With a sprinkle of candied petals and other darling little touches, With Love, Meghan landed like a pristine White Company counterpane of complacency on Netflix. Some may wince at the cutesy title, but I guess you can see why they rejected the more obvious alternatives: Rich Woman With Too Much Time on Her Hands or Marie Antoinette 2.0.
There is a definite “last queen of France” vibe about this series in which the Duchess of Sussex floats about in miles of designer white linen, affecting a longing for the simple, homespun life (plus peasants to launder the white linen, clearly). No flock of perfumed sheep with individual name tags in Meghan’s trademark calligraphy so far, but give her time.
Is it as bad as we feared? Oh, far worse than that, dear reader, but at least it has the makings of an accidental comedy classic. The first show opens with beekeeping. The world’s most successful Prince-bagger wears Oscars-night make-up in the great outdoors and protective anti-sting garb which has never before been teamed with exquisite diamond earrings. A fake to her fingertips, this is Meghan faking “natural”. “What’s the lifespan of a bee?” she asked the beekeeper, who seemed more wary of this particular queen bee than his drones. To be fair, both bees and actresses do rather well out of royal jelly.
Did Meghan perhaps betray an anxiety about the longevity of her own career? The Sussexes’ five-year, $100-million deal with Netflix expires before too long, with insiders saying it won’t be renewed. Their $20 million agreement with Spotify fell apart in 2023 after they had delivered just 12 episodes of Meghan’s ponderous Archetypes, interviews with women she finds inspirational, which involved a lot of talking about herself. Bill Simmons, the head of podcast innovation at Spotify, was incensed, saying a Meghan and Harry podcast should have been called “The F---ing Grifters”. Oh dear.
Meghan’s lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, with a focus on jams, food, gardening, hosting and homeware, was stillborn after a trademark problem. Its successor, As Ever, may have run into similar difficulties and, disastrously, it seems there are no products with the new label ready to sell.
A savage Vanity Fair cover story in January with the sneery headline, American Hustle, marked a nadir for the once fairytale pair who were married in Windsor in 2018, and their bid to reinvent themselves as media moguls. To say a lot is riding on the success of With Love, Meghan is an understatement. It’s crunch time, and not just on the crudités platter which Meg has rustled up for her make-up artist and friend, Daniel Martin.
“Wow, why doesn’t anyone ever present peas like this?” marvels Daniel, helpfully delivering one of the obsequious lines in which the cynical viewer may detect the hand of his hostess. I mean, when was the last time you had someone over for lunch and they said, “You’re always showing your love through food”? Me neither.
Such is the slender premise of this eight-part series. Meghan is the Hostess with the Mostest, having a friend to stay, “elevating” their visit with thoughtful, artistic gestures while involving them in crafts and cooking at which they express totally spontaneous surprise and delight. The late, great Shirley “Superwoman” Conran famously said, “Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.” Not in Montecito, honey. You just know Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, as the executive producer is grandly billed, would grow the mushroom herself (ie get a snaggle-toothed Mexican gardener to do it), then fill it with sauteed pumpkin and beets from her vast, paradisial veggie patch before strewing the fabulous fungus with arugula and the ubiquitous flower petals. “Love is in the detail,” she coos. All of this while allowing her puffy white blouse sleeve to droop over the bubbling Le Creuset pan. Put a pinny on, for God’s sake, woman!
Nigella Lawson’s How To Be a Domestic Goddess was written with tongue firmly in cheek and became a huge and deserved hit among women who felt under pressure to be perfect. Meghan is incapable of laughing at herself so this outlandish fantasy, in which a mother of two small children has time to make her own bath salts, candles and “beautiful on the inside” cake, is presented with a deadly Californian earnestness.
“Fun” is permissible in Meghan World so long as it’s organised. Upbeat music on the soundtrack just about drowns out the high-pitched hum emitted by this most controlled and controlling of women. Assembling a giant rainbow made of about £100 of fruit, Meghan tells her second guest, actress and comedian Mindy Kaling, “I take a lot of pride in making breakfast for my family.”
“You should try it with kids around sometime,” Kaling could have shot back, but sadly didn’t. (She did jokingly call Meghan “Tinkerbell” for scattering yet more petals on a frittata and the Duchess turned rather frosty, asking why Kaling called her “Meghan Markle” instead of “Meghan Sussex”, the royal “family name” which “means so much” to her. And don’t you dare try to take it off me, was the implied threat. No wonder King Charles gives the pair a wide berth.)
Without any apparent irony, the two women were assembling all the ingredients for a perfect kids’ tea party in a calm, spotless and, yes, entirely child-free kitchen! The funniest scene came when Meghan prepared the world’s most disappointing party bags. Into them she put mini gardening tools, a pack of seeds and, astoundingly, no cake, sweets or chocolate until, suddenly, she seemed to remember: “Oh, something sweet – manuka honey stick”. I’d love to have seen her give those bleakly wholesome, additive-neutral party bags to some actual children. They’d tell her where to shove her manuka stick.
But Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, American youngsters who are absurdly – and you may, like me, feel quite wrongly – blessed with titles courtesy of the Royal family they have nothing to do with, were nowhere to be seen. Prince Harry makes blink-and-you-miss-it appearances and gets a name check as “my husband” who always puts salt on his food before eating it. At the very least, you thought, we will get a peek inside the Sussexes’ home, the legendary Montecito Mansion of the Thirteen Fireplaces. No such luck. Meghan felt that would be too disruptive and intrusive so filming took place in another bijou residence.
She doesn’t get it, does she? The one and only reason she has her own TV show and millions in the bank is not because she is inherently fascinating or talented – in fact, the former Suits actress is entirely lacking in the warmth, genuine friendliness and relaxed, relatable qualities essential for a good presenter – but because she sat on a cash register when she married the fifth in line to the throne. As Meghan Markle, she created a successful lifestyle blog, The Tig, which made good use of her undeniable gift for styling, fashion and wine, but that formula feels stilted on the screen.* *
The sole Sussex project to deliver at the box office was Harry & Meghan, a no-holds-barred documentary series in which the gruesome twosome sold the family secrets and whined at inordinate length about Harry’s brother, royal protocol and the racist British Empire. All the Windsors gave them was a £32 million wedding, glittering titles, the affection of the British people and access to unimaginable privilege. Poor mites.
On the evidence of the new show so far (I’ve watched two episodes), the hypocritical Duchess is happy to invade everyone else’s privacy but her own. A manicured, super-choreographed performance, not even set in her own home, does not make the compelling, reality-TV series Netflix surely wants.
Could it be a success? Attempts to pretend Meghan’s World, a frictionless fantasy so lavish and heavenly it makes the set of Bridgerton look like the cobbled grime of Coronation Street, can be recreated on a budget are laughable. (“You can get wax from your local beekeeper,” the Duchess assures those champing to make their own candles. Thanks, hon, I’ll buy mine.) But there is definitely a market for lifestyle soft porn. Meghan is no Nigella and certainly no Martha Stewart. But for knackered mums – with real kids rather than invisible princes and princesses spirited away by nannies – slumping on the sofa with a glass of Savvy B and imagining whipping up a frittata in a white linen blouse that never gets stained could look very appealing.
Others will find it insufferably smug and repellent. I hate to think what our beloved late Queen, who specifically forbade the Sussexes to exploit their royal titles, would think. Meghan doesn’t care: narcissists don’t. If love is in the detail, then so is its opposite. There are some characters that all the flower petals in the world cannot sweeten.