The reviews for Meghan Markle’s new Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, have been coming in thick-and-fast, and while the saying might go ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’, it’s safe to say that in this particular case … the idiom might not quite apply.
In the eight-episode lifestyle series, Markle showcases her cooking and gardening skills while spending time with celebrity friends. The show also offers a brief appearance from her husband, Prince Harry.
Critics have been bitterly divided over whether of not Meghan ‘I’m Sussex now’ Markle’s show lived up to the hype with some offering a brutal assessment of the former Suits star’s foray into the lifestyle sphere, while others were softer and even crediting the show with changing their opinion of Markle to a more favourable.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
A still from ‘With Love, Meghan’. Netflix.
The bad
Anita Singh from The Telegraph called the show an “an exercise in narcissism” one that is “filled with extravagant brunches, celebrity pals and business plugs”.
“It is, to put it kindly, insane”, Singh added, before getting stuck into the format: “Meghan invites people to her pretend house – the show is filmed in an $8 million farmhouse down the road from her $14 million home – and they tell her how amazing she is.”
While The Guardian’s Stuart Heritage described With Love, Meghan as “the sort of gormless lifestyle filler that, had it been made by the BBC, would be used to bulk out episodes of Saturday Kitchen”.
Chitra Ramaswamy, from the same publication, was even more brutal, describing the program as one that is not only “tone-deaf” and “toe-curling”, but also one that “vibrates with a vacuous, over styled joylessness”.
Katie Rosseinsky from The Independent, called the show “queasy and exhausting”, one that “simultaneously strains for aspiration and relatability in a way that never gels”.
Perhaps, however, the most cutting remarks came from Camilla Tominay, also from The Telegraph (like Singh) who wrote that “If the Sussexes really were genuine working parents, they’d have a better idea of what it actually entails”.
A still from ‘With Love, Meghan’. Netflix.
The good
Yasmin Jeffery at the ABC meanwhile took umbrage with ‘scathing review after scathing review’ about the show, instead offering something slightly more diplomatic by writing “With Love, Meghan is the kind of show you put on your big screen while doing something else on your smaller screen”.
Bianca Betancourt at Harpers Bazaar, was so taken with Markl-, sorry, Sussex’s series that she even went on to compare to the likes if Ina Garten and Martha Stewart writing that while “all the recipes look beautiful, but they still feel accessible for the regular person at home”.
Closer to home, Sunrise’s Edwina Bartholomew praised the show’s aesthetic, saying that it “feels like (an) Instagram algorithm on screen”.
The popular presenter even went on to call out the widespread bullying aimed at the former actress, writing: “The bullying Meghan has endured is on such an epic scale that it actually feels shameful. The show is saccharine. It’s very American. It’s also very watchable”.
Perhaps the most (if I may) ‘fan girl’ review of the show comes from The Nightly’s Clare Rigden who proclaims “Let the Martha Stewartification begin!”. One does wonder however, if the passing of the baton involves a pit stop at the local penitentiary for full ‘Stewartification’ effect.
Rigden goes on to write that she was not only “charmed” but was “eating up” the “glorious escapism”.
As for this writer… well, the focus on aesthetic from a show which (apparently) celebrates ‘joy’ and ‘friendship’ is jarring. Markle exists in a world where, if she is not surrounded by a homegrown boisterous bounty of fruit and vegetables, a mother can merrily skip down to the local farmers market and purchase all that is needed to satiate her bonnie brood.
In this climate. In this cost of living crisis.
But I digress. Escapism it is … one does wonder, however, how far Meghan ‘I’m Sussex now’ Markle and Prince Harry have in fact traversed to escape to confines of real life, as both clearly appear to instead be orbiting the Earth rather than inhabiting it.