‘Impossible to watch’: Moment Meghan’s Netflix show goes off the rails

The Duchess of Sussex’s new lifestyle show has just landed - and just a few minutes in, there was a moment that proved it was doomed.

OPINION

You can see the scene now: A harried American working mother dashing around the kitchen at 7.23am in one of those -iana-ending states in that vast middle bit of the country we couldn’t find on a map if you paid us.

She’s making breakfasts, finding shoes, worried about her gas bill and the $17 price of eggs.

“No,” she says to herself.

“I will find joy in imperfection. Today I will elevate this sacred moment. What would Meghan do?”

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And then she proceeds to slice organic raspberries in half to create wonder in the everyday for her kids while the dog is sick under the table and the washer freezes mid-rinse cycle.

Because it’s here. Finally. 2889 days after Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex decommissioned her lifestyle blog The Tig to secure a supposedly one way golden ticket into the royal family, she has officially returned to the game with her new series, With Love, Meghan.

Having watched four of the eight episodes, which came out on Tuesday night in Australia, I too need to express my authentic feelings which are, what the actual hell?

The scene that perfectly encapsulates the absurdity – and just how detached from 2025 and the Zeitgeist this show is – comes when Meghan whips up two jars of jam, using nine cups of fresh raspberries. The internet tells me that that amount, at current LA prices, will set you back $36.55.

Meghan shows us how to make ‘tea bags for the bath’ full of rose petals. Picture: Netflix

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It’s hard to think of a worse time than now for the Duchess of Sussex’s show to come out, when the number one reason Donald Trump was re-elected was his repeated promises to bring down food prices while the world is in the grip of cost of living crisis.

The cost of a single one of Meghan’s crudité platters would be enough to feed a Nebraskan family of four for several days. To buy the mass of edible flowers she persists in strewing, you could restock a book-ban ravaged public library.

With Love doesn’t feel aspirational, but profoundly jarring, like watching an episode of an old TV show from the past. It feels like a relic of 2024 that strikes a loud, discordant note, because that’s exactly what it is.

This was all shot this time last year and the world has lurched horrifyingly on its axis since then.

With Vladimir Putin possibly on the cusp of decimating Ukraine and triggering World War 3, an official hunger crisis in the US and the world’s climate going to hell in one of Meghan’s beloved baskets, is anyone really that interested in flower arranging, creating “tea bags for the bath” full of rose petals or faffing about making lavender hand towels or attaching twee calligraphed name tags on everything that doesn’t move?

With Love, Meghan is the political and temporal equivalent of watching Bridgerton. Picture: Netflix

This eight-parter does not meet the moment, and is the political and temporal equivalent of watching Bridgerton.

There are a legion of parts of With Love that are impossible to watch straight-faced. In one episode, presented with a lavishly decorated garden greenhouse that has clearly had a team of professionals fiddling with it for days, Meghan says, “you can do this on a budget” and references buying a “little candelabra”.

In a later episode, she says that “even” people who live in “little flats” can have her lifestyle.

But can they, Meghan? Can they? Where would their copper compost pots, like yours, go?

I know, I know. This flavour of TV is not about reality but fantasy – but as fantasies go, it’s oddly hollow and not that appealing. Stunning, chic, unbelievably scenic? Bien sur. Does Meghan seem like a nice person to know and fun to slurp midmorning champagne with? Indeed.

But against the backdrop of America circa 2025, what Meghan has created feels so pointless it makes it uncomfortable to watch. The life she presents to us, of constantly affixing labels to things and creating “moments”, doesn’t seem aspirational but empty, and oh-so laborious and time-consuming.

Prince Harry makes a cameo. Picture: Netflix

It also has to be said, With Love is just plain weird. It has to be one of the strangest and awkwardest shows to have ever been wedged into the lifestyle canon.

There is no structure and each episode is made up of odd vignettes shot in different places around a house that is not hers, with people she has not actually met, making recipes she has never tried before or doesn’t like actually cooking.

This whole endeavour is about selling Meghan as an expert, but she frequently whips up dishes that she tells us are new to her.

She bakes but, er, says she isn’t a keen baker.

In one episode, a “recipe” is … a charcuterie board. In another, she cuts up fruit. Yoghurt gets put in nicer glasses. In the first 10 minutes of the first episode, the duchess instructs viewers on how to take pretzels out of one plastic packet … to put them into another plastic bag tied with a shabby chic ribbon. Oooh, give us the recipe, do!

There is also the handy segment on putting lavender hand towels in the fridge as she urges us, “Treat yourself. It feels like a hotel experience at home”.

I suppose the refreshing scent of lavender is just what you need when Prince Harry is tetchily pacing around the family’s actual kitchen 8500km away after his father King Charles has refused to take another one of his phone calls.

Meghan Markle and skincare founder Vicky Tsai in an episode of With Love, Meghan. Picture: Netflix

Many of the duchess’ guests are foodie names like Alice Waters or Roy Choi who she hasn’t met before, so you are essentially just watching two people on TV making stilted small talk.

It’s like someone filmed the conversation at a mid-level HR firm’s pina colada mixer where they can’t stop banging on about jam. Sorry, “preserves”.

Mindy Kaling is such a good friend she gets Meghan’s name wrong. We learn Harry makes scrambled eggs and oversalts his food.

Meghan constantly tells us it’s not about perfection, but her kitchen is at all times ruthlessly spotless and so very, very white and pristine that the only conclusion is she has an army of off-camera helpers poised to swoop in and whisk away dirty teaspoons lest they touch the perfect marble counters.

Meanwhile, the novelty of the Duchess of Sussex’s breaking-the-fourth-wall interactions with the producer and crew gets tiring after about the 17th time they do it. There are multiple scenes of her making coffee. If what has been missing in your life is a show where you can watch a very wealthy woman wait for her plunger, you are in luck.

A health warning: Do not consider using this series for a drinking game. If you had a sip every time she talked about “elevating” things or giggled or said “you guys” or talked about “hostessing” or “preserves” or cooked something dangerously splattery in perfect white, you would end up falling-down drunk.

In one episode, Meghan chops fruit. Picture: Netflix

With Love was never going to feature three ways with a packet of hastily half-defrosted mince, but the ludicrousness of it will stop you in your tracks. The duchess uses “finishing salt” (err, just some Maldon then, love?); describes how she thinks about the soundtrack and “visuals” when she’s “putting together a kids party” like the Jeff Koons of the kindy set; says while making one of her interminable crudité platters, “I’m doing a colour story here”; and when she makes candles, she handily suggests, “You can get wax from your local beekeeper”.

There is an entire segment devoted to making a balloon arch that only requires you to buy a specialised balloon pump, balloon decorating tape, have the patience of Gandhi and about as much spare time as it would take you to re-grout your bathroom. The duchess is not going to know herself if anyone ever tells her about the party section at Kmart.

(The waste and packaging produced by a single day in the Sussex household would surely horrify their pal Greta Thunberg. I don’t imagine she really goes in for wrapping her “hostessing” snacks in unrecyclable cellophane bags destined for landfill).

In the first four episodes alone, she puts edible flowers on yoghurt parfaits, a frittata, tea sandwiches, crostini, a fruit plate and doughnuts. My, someone doesn’t also have a lifestyle brand that is about to start selling exactly this, hmmm?

That explains why edible flowers feature so heavily on the show. Picture: As Ever website

A quick glance at the As Ever website also reveals why there are so many recipes that include honey and why she is constantly brewing herbal tea, both products that will be available “spring 2025”.

All of this, though, might not matter but for one simple fact that even a lavish Netflix budget couldn’t save: The Duchess of Sussex is boring. Ironically for one of the most polarising people on the planet, Meghan’s show – and the Meghan who comes across on it – are just bland.

Either Meghan self-censored herself to an extreme degree, or she is quite simply dull.

What becomes clear in With Love is that take away the duchess’ Homeric hug-deprived odyssey in the UK, look past her title and the Kate stuff and whether Crown Inc gave her a raw deal, and the woman who turns up on screen is as interesting as a half-toasted slice of plain sourdough.

Meghan’s series is the Sussexes’ last roll of the dice Picture: Netflix

In the first episode, Meghan makes “single skillet spaghetti”, clearly delighted with having discovered sibilance. The Italians already have a name for this dish, Spaghetti all’Assassina, and the question is, will With Love be what saves or kills her Hollywood phantasm?

You probably don’t need me to remind you about how the Sussexes signed a stonking deal with Netflix for barrel loads of money, and then after the streamer had gotten their pound of tell-all flesh, the duke and duchess then spectacularly failed to land any sort of hit.

Meghan’s series is their last roll of the dice and last chance to hang onto their most valuable and only remaining shared content deal. Their ability to demand large cheques full of fat zeros rests solely on their ability to transition their brand from perma-aggrieved monarchical martyrs into something that people will care about.

Handily, if Americans don’t want to watch With Love, they have another no doubt thrilling option to tune in to, Mr Trump’s State of the Union address. I’m sure he will have come up with plenty of handy dandy and fast ways to help a country-on-the-edge.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as ‘Impossible to watch’: Moment Meghan’s Netflix show goes off the rails