An unashamedly one-sided story full of half-truths

The royal formerly known as Prince Harry had billed it as “the full truth” only the couple knew. But “Vol 1” of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s much-hyped Netflix series is probably best described as Harry, Meghan and the Half Truth Prince: an act of glossy wizardry designed to depict the couple as the Gryffindor to royals’ Slytherin.

Yet by the end of the first three episodes, it soon becomes apparent that the only Mug(gle) to have fallen under any spell is Harry himself – a husband so besotted by his wife that he has been completely blinded to the magic of his once majestic life.

The former military man and his American actress wife had gone on Oprah armed with an Uzi, submachine-gunning their relatives with claims of racism and institutionalised indifference that nearly drove them both to suicide.

This was a more subtle form of televisual warfare. Like a love story featuring an arrow filled with explosives, it used slick propaganda, thinly veiled jibes and a Sussex squad of loyal troops to do battle against bigoted Britain and its racist press.

Yet as soon becomes apparent with this unashamedly one-sided story, there is nothing fair in love and war when it’s waged against an opposition who can’t fight back.

At the very beginning, a sort of The Crown-esque non-disclaimer disclaimer appears stating: “Members of the Royal family declined to comment on the content within this series.”

Yet according to the palace, they received an email “purporting to be from a third-party production company” and then “contacted Netflix to attempt to verify the authenticity of the email but received no response”.

The palace also maintains that neither the King, nor the Prince and Princess of Wales – or indeed any member of the Royal family – were approached for comment on the content of the series.

So what we are left with – not unlike The Crown – is a completely partisan and overly dramatic interpretation of real life events. It cannot even be

classed as a reality TV show since it is a projection of perfection, rather than anything remotely warts-and-all.

As a walk down memory lane, it makes for very compelling viewing – not least when it emerges that the couple started filming video-diaries the second the ink dried on the Sandringham summit.

We are treated to never-seen-before photographs and footage of the couple and their children that amount to the sort of privacy invasion 1980s paparazzi could only dream of.

But it’s OK – because it’s on their terms. “Consent is a key piece of this,” insists Harry, neglecting to mention the role played by the rumoured £100million they’re being paid by the online streaming giant.

The bottom dollar perhaps explains why Netflix has felt the need to string out a story that could easily be told in an hour into six interminable episodes.

As has ever been the case with Meg-a-whinge and Prince Harassed, they’ve got a story and they’re not afraid to tell it.

Over and over again.

On Oprah, Harry spoke of being the victim of a media conspiracy. Two years in California appears to have broadened his horizons. Now it seems the conspiracy not only involves the media – but also the palace to which he once belonged. Or “exploitation and bribery between our family and the media”, as he puts it.

Royal correspondents, he explains to Mandana Dayani (the “friend”-cumrecently-resigned president of their Archewell Foundation), are “an extended PR arm of the Royal family”, before contradicting himself by saying the British press believes “this family is ours to exploit. Their trauma is our story”.

Confused? Well, the couple certainly are, as they appear to conflate Twitter trolls with the mainstream media and refuse to draw a distinction between the photographers who covered their official engagements and those who chased Diana, Princess of Wales, down le Pont de l’alma.

Compared with being called racists, this documentary isn’t half as damaging as the palace feared (albeit only three episodes in). But, crikey, it must hurt to see Harry not only denounce his family, but now the country he once fought for as a bunch of Brexit-voting white supremacists. As contributor Afua Hirsch, a renowned anti-monarchist, trashed the Commonwealth as “the Empire 2.0” one could almost hear the late Queen turning in her grave.

For William, the inclusion of the Panorama interview that he insisted should never again see the light of day will cut most deep.

If it wasn’t bad enough that Harry references the 1995 interview that found Martin Bashir to be in “serious breach of BBC guidelines”, he even appears to justify it by saying “we all now know she was deceived into giving that experience but she was speaking her lived experience”.

With this documentary, we are all living half of the experience. As for the other half – one imagines that recollections may vary.