Susie O’Brien: Netflix doco a casually cruel, frightful piece of TV

Harry and Meghan’s truly awful, self-serving piece of TV fiction isn’t a love story, as they claim, it’s a brutal assassination of both of their families.

Last night’s Harry and Meghan doco was three hours of very expensive self-serving horsesh--.

The wealthy royals were paid $150m by Netflix for six hours of screen time. That’s more than $400,000 for every excruciating minute.

I’d planned to catch half an hour but ended up watching the first three hours despite myself.

I was interested to see how they concocted facts and confected scenarios to justify their own choices.

I wasn’t disappointed.

This isn’t a love story, as they claim, it’s a brutal assassination of both of their families.

They rewrite history and realign facts to fit their sense of entitlement and outrage.

This doco claims to present “the full truth” of how hard it was for them as a mixed-race couple.

But what’s missing from this truly awful piece of fiction is the fact that they were welcomed warmly from the outset.

Harry and Meghan have done everything they can to dish the dirt on their nearest and dearest. Picture: Netflix

And there’s also the inconvenient truth that since they’ve left the royal family, Harry and Meghan have done everything they can to dish the dirt on their nearest and dearest.

This TV event was no different.

They pulled us in with their best-friend voice and intimate confessional tone.

We saw the doggie Instagram post of Meghan that Harry fell in love with.

We know that he calls her “M” and she calls him “H”.

Hell, we even know that her mother calls him “H”.

Then they got nasty.

From the grounds of their Californian mansion to palatial royal residences, this young couple conducted their giant pity party.

The media – which did so much to support them – is seen as the enemy.

So are members of their families.

Meghan’s half-sister Samantha.

Meghan’s father Tom.

Harry’s brother William and his wife Kate.

Harry and Meghan’s documentary isn’t a love story. Picture: Netflix

Harry is allowed to make a mistake (wear a Nazi uniform at a party) but he’s allowed to say sorry and learn from it.

However, mistakes made by others are played out in gory detail.

One of the few times William and Kate feature is the first time they meet Meghan.

As she tells the story, she was in bare feet and wearing ripped jeans and was “a hugger”.

“I didn’t realise that was jarring for a lot of Brits,” Meghan says, clearly making a point about her sister-in-law. She drives the point home by saying that formality for some (not her, but Kate) “carries over”.

Once they left, she closed the door: “I can relax now”, she says.

The casual cruelty of that story is breathtaking, as is the way Meghan made fun of having to curtsy to the Queen.

The pair had racism claims to justify, and background to an American audience to pander to, so race was also a large part of the narrative.

The casual cruelty in Meghan making fun of having to curtsy to the Queen is breathtaking.

They raided the annals of British colonial history and played up recent Brexist anti-immigrant sentiment.

None of this has anything to do with the way Harry and Meghan were treated, but it’s got a lot to do with their self-serving claims.

Harry also spends a lot of time in the show building up the similarities between him and his mother.

“I am my mother’s son,” he says at one point.

Cue the cute footage of Di and Charles walking out of the hospital with a newborn Harry in her arms – footage that Meghan denied the world because she didn’t want to share such a moment with the public.

Meghan says: “We are conscious of protecting our kids as best we can and the role they play in this really historical family”.

The whole documentary is a giant concoction to justify to American audiences the decision Meghan and Harry made to walk away from royal life. Picture: Netflix

And yet the three hours I’ve seen so far show the royal family – which her children are members of — as out of touch, rude and careless.

The whole documentary is a giant concoction to justify to American audiences the decision Meghan and Harry made to walk away from royal life.

It’s a decision many would understand, but their actions since then – their victimhood, their preaching and their pontificating — have made alienated them from many.

The money the pair were paid for the show, the barbs they’ve delivered since and the global audience the docuseries will attract show they are far from victims.

The hypocrisy throughout this frightful piece of television is unbelievable.

You won’t see the real truth in this documentary, which is that Meghan and Harry had the support of everyone until they found their voice as privileged, entitled, wealthy victims.