Meghan and Harry are in the final year of their $80 million production deal with Netflix, and it is fair to say the results of the partnership have been mixed. After unpacking their trauma and sharing their truth, in a six-part 2022 documentary, the Sussexes have since pivoted into bland, “eat your greens” telly about “leadership” (Live To Lead) and several months ago bored us all silly with a terrible doc about the people’s sport, polo. It was Netflix’s Formula One: Drive to Survive, if entirely populated by individuals you’d like to see chucked in the Bastille.
Now, in what is widely regarded as a final throw of the right royal dice, Meghan is going full influencer with her lifestyle show With Love, Meghan (Netflix, from Tuesday). It’s Martha Stewart by way of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, with a sprinkling of the “tradwife” Instagram – only the worst possible version of all three, with Markle a black hole of beige throughout.
The big conceit is that we, the impoverished viewers, can hang with Meghan for a few precious hours. And yet, the velvet rope is always in sight. Filming takes place not in Meghan’s actual house but in some sort of guest mansion adjoining her property, and if there are passing references to her husband and children, we never see them on screen. With Love, Meghan is trying to sell us on Meghan’s lifestyle without actually showing us any of it.
Instead, a parade of friends make the pilgrimage to Meghan’s cradle of craft. First up is make-up artist Daniel Martin, who is menaced by a platter of vegetables carved and arranged by Meghan and by which he is required to be impressed. Next, comedian Mindy Kaling troops in and helps Meghan to make a “balloon arch” for a hypothetical children’s party (no children actually appear, nor is there a party).
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Meghan is enthusiastic yet struggles to distinguish between living the best influencer life and acting like a normal human being. For instance, when gushing about her idealised kids’ birthday party, she astonishes Kaling by revealing that she is “always thinking about the parent experience ... I will always have a coffee station for the parents”. In other words, she serves coffee to her guests – a lifestyle tip potentially more extraneous than she realises.
As eye candy With Love, Meghan underwhelms too. Her crudités are crude, her home-made candles look like something from the homeware aisle in Dealz, and the “banter” between host and guests has all the spark of a dead battery on a frosty morning. Lustreless and bland, it doesn’t even rise to the status of a hate-watch. With Love, Meghan may well grab enough eyeballs to justify all that cash Netflix has stumped up – but this is nonetheless a moribund addition to the lifestyle TV genre.
