Dear Meghan
thank you for the video letter/television series. I didn’t think we had that sort of relationship, to be honest, you being the duchess of Sussex and me being a humble but charismatic commoner who writes a TV column in an Irish newspaper, albeit a unionist newspaper that pledges fealty to the crown sporadically. But I guess we’re friends now.
We are not so different, you and I. You are surveilled at all times by your own camera crew (most famous people seem to have reality shows instead of social media now) while I am frequently filmed by teenagers who mock me on the bus. You start With Love, Meghan (Netflix) by visiting a hive of bees with a hippie beekeeper; I also have a swarm of insects in my house.
The hippie beekeeper talks about how different bees in a hive have different roles. And you nod wisely because you have, quite cunningly, chosen to showcase a monarchist animal at the outset of the show. It’s clear what you’re saying here. The beekeeper, who is a simple drone, and you, who are an actual royal, also have different roles. Such is the law of nature. But you’re not making a big deal about it even though your producer credit at the end of the show literally reads “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex”.
We already have Great House Revival. What we need now is Feck the Preservation Order, Let’s Knock It and Build an Office Block
I feel we’re close now, Meghan, so I can speak freely. The right pitch is crucial in lifestyle hucksterism like yours
On Prime, Jack Reacher is still wandering from town to town, much like the 2FM Roadcaster
‘It’s boobing out!’ Kim Kardashian cries. Irish Times readers will recognise this reference to the Heaney poem of that name
Later you mention a teacher who inspired you. His name, you tell television’s Mindy Kaling, your normal everyday pal, is Mr Benn. Seriously, it really is Mr Benn. Is it Mr Benn from the 1970s BBC children’s TV show of the same name? If so, it feels especially fitting that you start the show dressed as a beekeeper. Hopefully in future episodes you’ll dress like a pirate or an astronaut.
Look, I’m not saying you’re cosplaying, like Mr Benn or recreational shepherdess Marie Antoinette (although she would definitely have had a lifestyle brand – “Cake” or something). I would never say that now we’re engaged in this frank and honest epistolary exchange.
I suppose we are a bit different, you and I. For example, you, Meghan Sussex, spend much of your time in a gleaming white kitchen of the sort I am not allowed to enter (because I generate stains). If I ever found myself in a room this gleaming and white, I would assume I was dead.
This is, it must be said, not your actual home, which is probably a golden sarcophagus orbiting the moon or a pillared mansion on robot legs terrorising Los Angeles, but the normal big kitchen of a regular, run-of-the-mill rich person. It was chosen, no doubt, to make you seem more relatable. I could really see a coworker or relative I resent owning a kitchen like this.
Pitching your audience’s aspirations just right is very important in lifestyle hucksterism, and aiming at the level of a resented coworker or relative is ideal. It’s a bit harder to create aspirational envy in people if you live under the sea or in the head of the Sphinx or on the International Space Station or wherever you and Harry actually live.
Your lifestyle tips are, in fairness, quite useful. In the first episode you have a visit from your friend Daniel, a former make-up artist on the television show Suits, on which you first became famous, but only LA famous and not royal-family famous, which is a much better kind of famous.
Daniel comes to stay and look uncomfortable, and you show us all how to prepare little treats to put beside the bed of a guest – home-made popcorn, some blooms from the garden, a facial scrub – and not the usual paraphernalia an Irish Times journalist might leave at a guest’s bedside: a can of Dutch Gold, some out-of-date Monster Munch and a stick to beat away the bats.
The main thing you do on this show is bake and cook. Given the length of time it took the Meghan-and-Harry industrial complex to create this programme, I feel a little let down by this. Cookery seems safe and staid, and I do wish they had also allowed you to try other tasks in which you have no record: surgery, flying a plane, reforming the deep state. Surely some sort of diplomatic immunity covers you for “accidents”. In my view you should be allowed to do as you please.
You are, in fairness, a calming presence, like a gentle breeze or a warm lamp or the sound of a brook. It might be all the jaunty stock jazz that’s playing, or it might be all the Netflix money that is no doubt stuffed in those tasteful kitchen drawers or it might be the fact you definitely have an army of household staff off camera, but your cookery shenanigans have none of the wide-eyed panic, screaming and foetal-position rocking that accompany cooking in my house.
You chat pleasantly and inconsequentially to famous friends and show us how to feed chickens or make a vinaigrette or write a list or wrap presents. Sometimes, in fact, it seems like the production team thinks the audience are a bunch of hicks who live in a hole and don’t know how to use Sellotape. Although, when I said that, my wife said, “But you don’t know how to properly wrap presents.” (She says hello, by the way.)
I feel that we’re close now, Meghan, and that I can speak freely. With Love, Meghan is gently underwhelming. I’m not bored, exactly, but I do feel a bit glazed (like the doughnuts you make in episode three!).
This is probably by design. I suspect With Love, Meghan is constructed to be an ambient parasocial experience, like sniffing a scented candle or gazing at a screensaver, and not a highly engaged, immersive experience, like watching Severance or reading this newspaper. Does that sound familiar from the production meetings?
Some are incensed at you making this show of fripperies while war and economic turmoil roil the wider world. Here I disagree. I see a shrewd adaptability in your eyes and think there’s something fittingly end-times about the overall format.
I predict that, as the global situation worsens, With Love, Meghan will segue into a show for rugged survivalists. One minute you’ll be showing us how to prep a gift bag and the next you’ll be digging a bunker and brightly explaining how to preserve the corpse of a drifter for the long nuclear winter ahead.
I predict those schmucks in the palace will be long cannibalised by their subjects as you go into your second decade of being a postapocalyptic strong woman.
One way or another, I think you’ve got this, Meghan.
With reserved liking, Patrick
