Review
With
Love, Meghan review – toe-curlingly unlovable TV
The Duchess
of Sussex’s tone-deaf lifestyle show vibrates with vacuous joylessness – and is
packed with useless information that will take a long, long time to remove from
your head
Chitra
Ramaswamy
Tue 4 Mar
2025 19.00 CET
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/mar/04/with-love-meghan-review-netflix
It begins
with bees. Because, yes, bees are aspirational signifiers of the good life. And
yes, bees make beautiful honey for, say, stirring into a sun tea (that would be
tea steeped in California sunshine for approx three to four hours) or drizzling
into a “beautiful on the inside” cake (which, as far as I can make out, is a
Victoria sponge.) But the Duchess of Sussex, who only started beekeeping a year
ago but already has “good vibes for good hives”, also sees them as a reminder
to do something that scares you a little bit. Like, say, making a tone-deaf
lifestyle show in a $8m (£6.3m) Montecito farmhouse while the US and beyond
goes to hell in a handcart. “I’m trying to stay in the calm of it because it’s
beautiful to be this connected,” she whispers in a low tone, so as not to spook
the bees.
Or, indeed,
her viewers, who find themselves at the deflating juncture where we can finally
judge to our heart’s content the contemporary curio that is With Love, Meghan.
Do we really need to though? Gazillions of words, many of them predictably
hateful, have already been spewed on what it is actually about, based on the
two-minute trailer alone. Is Meghan the ultimate tradwife? A domestic goddess
in the wink-wink Nigella vein (if only!)? A fake flaunting her wealth? Is it a
cynical money-making exercise (Netflix reportedly paid the Sussexes £78m for
their overall deal)? A right-on sister who genuinely cares about diversity? An
estranged royal suffering from an incurable case of earnestness? Or, as the New
York Times dubbed her, is she “the millennial Martha Stewart of Montecito”?
Having
watched the whole damn thing, I can confirm that I haven’t got the foggiest.
But I do know that the duchess loves lemon zesting. And that she keeps
flaxseeds, chia seeds and hemp hearts on her counter so she can dust her kids’
pancakes willy-nilly. And that she’s got impressive knife skills. And refers to
herself as “Meg’” on the labels she ties around her mason jars, which are
filled with whatever surprising moments she happens to be elevating. And that
all those years slumming it as a freelance calligrapher have really paid off –
her handwriting is lovely.
For those
who have been hiding in a bunker for completely understandable reasons, With
Love, Meghan sees the Duchess of Sussex cooking, flower arranging, candle
making, jarring preserves, scenting towels with lavender, making harvest
baskets, blowing balloon arches, arranging fruit into rainbows and sprinkling
dried edible flowers on literally everything. Creating “moments” is her jam.
Though jam, which usually contains equal parts and sugar and fruit, is very
much not her jam because she feels the traditional recipe ratio detracts from
the fruit, so actually she’s all about slightly less sweet preserves.
There’s a
lot of useless information like this in my head now that will need to be
removed slowly, by applying the same care that Meghan shows when designing a
crudité plate. Which, incidentally, she makes every single day for her husband
and kids. And that’s why they all love vegetables so much! “We don’t all have a
garden like this,” she acknowledges as she goes about the sun-washed
enorma-estate with her trug, picking lemons always with the leaves on. “I fully
recognise that. I didn’t grow up with a garden like this. But go to a farmers
market and you can find something … ”
Oh God, it’s
toe-curling stuff, but hardly surprising. We all saw Meghan show Oprah her
chicken coop. Her lifestyle brand was until very recently, called American
Riviera Orchard, which I think was supposed to give off an Alice Waters idyll
filmed by Nancy Meyers vibe, but sounded more like the sister takeaway to
Chicken Cottage. Anyway, she’s now renamed it As Ever. Frankly, WhatEver would
be more on brand. Because what With Love, Meghan vibrates with most is a
vacuous, over styled joylessness.
Harry,
mostly referred to as “my husband”, features briefly at the end of the final
episode, Feels Like Home, in which Meghan cooks a celebration brunch with
Waters to mark the next chapter of her life. I fear this next chapter may be a
hidden extra episode, but it seems to be the (re)launch of As Ever. We do
discover that Harry salts everything at the table and, like a real man-prince,
loves his bacon and fried chicken. Not exactly top news lines but, as With
Love, Meghan fails to teach us, we all have to make and do. Otherwise, the
guests are friends such as “email pen pal” Mindy Kaling, who struggles to crack
jokes in such a rarefied environment and ends up saying vapid things like “What
are you, Tinker Bell?!” when Meghan starts sprinkling dried flowers again. The
best, as in the most real, episode is Two Kids from LA, when Meghan invites Los
Angeles chef Roy Choi over and they make fried chicken and kimchi, discuss the
1990s racist backlash against MSG and reminisce about their LA childhoods. When
all is said and done, there is but one aspect of With Love, Meghan on which we
can all agree – her old beagle, Guy, is a real honey.
Otherwise,
it’s back to sweating the small stuff – sniffing essential oils, putting manuka
honey into gift bags, and elevating grocery-store carnations. It’s not the
activities themselves that are offensive, nor indeed the credo to glean joy
from life’s small moments. I could watch Nigella dress her dining table with
tea lights then jump into a black cab headed for the local deli until the cows
come home. It’s the lack of humour, irony, self-awareness and apprehension of
the reality of this deeply unequal and apocalyptic world that makes With Love,
Meghan so unlovable in the end.
With Love, Meghan is on Netflix now
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