Los Angeles, CA – Five episodes into With Love, Meghan, audiences will have learned three things about host Meghan Markle: She takes pride in making breakfast for her family every morning; her favorite tunes to listen to are ’70s soft rock, Yacht rock, and French dinner party music; and she no longer wishes to be referred to as Meghan Markle. “It’s so funny that you keep saying ‘Meghan Markle,’ you know, I’m Sussex now,” the Duchess of Sussex tells guest Mindy Kaling in episode two of the Netflix series. “You have kids and you go, ‘No, I share my name with my children.'”
Described on Netflix’s Tudum platform as “a heartfelt tribute to the beauty of Southern California,” With Love, Meghan lives up to its name with picturesque views of the mountains from the backyard of Meghan and Prince Harry’s Montecito home, some 80 miles north of Los Angeles. The dish is perhaps the most relatable aspect of the eight-episode series, which is arguably too perfectly shot for its own good, as Meghan doesn’t so much as get a spattering of egg batter on her Zara pants or Loro Piana top when she comes to set early to bake a fresh frittata for Kaling’s arrival, much less share aspects of her personality outside of having a bright green thumb.
It’s in that regard that the show doesn’t live up to its promise of a reimagined lifestyle program or “candid conversation with friends, new and old.” The closest the series comes to that is L.A. chef Roy Choi explaining the racism that underlies the negative reputation of MSG in food as they prepare to dine on Korean fried chicken and champagne. Otherwise, the show comes across as an oddly timed peek into how the other half lives. However, with an economy many believe is on the brink of a recession and a sociopolitical environment in which the demographic most likely to be able to connect with the show’s tradwife aesthetic is equally likely to resent Meghan for her racial identity, it’s hard to see the lifestyle program as relevant to anyone except Meghan and Harry.
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Immediately upon the show’s debut, criticisms roared in from both American and British press, categorizing the series as “an ego trip not worth taking” and an “exercise in narcissism.” While it’s unfair to ask Meghan to apologize for her wealth or the world she and her friends live in, the attempts at being aspirational, like remarking how sweet it is to build a balloon arch by hand for her kids’ parties rather than hire someone else, fall flat when there’s no honest conversation about the difficulties of motherhood with fellow mom guests. Without the ingredient of relatability, which audiences crave more than anything, the series doesn’t serve up much more than fancy recipes that, according to the latest data on the price of eggs, most viewers can’t afford to make anyway.
