A saccharine, self-regarding piece of work
What a busy week it’s been for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. On Wednesday, they received the Ripple of Hope Award from the Robert F Kennedy human rights organisation for their “moral courage”, racial justice work, and “belief in love over hate”. Yesterday, they took that stirring mission global in the first three episodes of Harry & Meghan, a no-expense-spared production by Netflix, part of a deal for which the couple has been paid a rumoured $100million. As the Duke says when reflecting grimly on the behaviour of the father-in-law he has never met.
“It’s amazing what people will do when offered a huge amount of money.” It sure is, Harry.
We knew from the appetisers that we were probably about to be served a banquet of saccharine self-regard from Saint Sussex of Montecito Inc, but this tooth-rotting content may require an urgent visit to the dentist.
The story begins in March 2020 with our brave couple’s flight from all that ghastly white privilege and media misinformation in the UK. “Hate stirred up against my wife and son,” fumes Harry from the Windsor Lounge at Heathrow (there’s only so much privilege a prince can be expected to jettison at one time).
“They are DESTROYING us!,” cries Meghan, addressing the camera bare-faced with her hair in a towel. Cue one exquisite tear from the eye of the never-really-retired actress. This is unintentionally hilarious. Why doesn’t the Duchess dry her hair quickly before recording the video diary?
Don’t be silly, this is the raw, naked truth we’re talking about here, not some artful piece of propaganda calculated to garner sympathy for the pampered pair.
In case the viewer is wondering why Meghan filmed herself straight out of the shower, Harry explains that “a friend suggested we document ourselves through this time”. Please don’t insinuate the video diary was shot with a canny eye on cashing in later. If you do, that will unmask you as racist, someone who probably sings the national anthem wearing a Union Jack bowler hat and undoubtedly voted for Brexit (more on this later).
“This is a great love story,” explains the Duke, using love to justify the selfishness and petty revenge that follows. Over a montage of joyful Sussex family snaps in Vancouver and Montecito, Nina Simone’s I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free is playing. Meghan is shown wafting in the garden clutching a handful of roses (as you always do after dark). “Both the babies are down, this calm night,” she coos. Archie is held up to be shown a photograph on the nursery wall. “There’s Grandma Diana!”
The blockbuster series is directed by Oscar-winning Liz Garbus, and whatever they paid her it was worth it. Like a high-end car advert, every sequence is beguiling, glorious; there are frictionless gear-changes from new-love rapture to deepening threat. Like Meghan herself, the series so far (three more parts will be released on December 15) is a beautiful, highly accomplished, stylish, self-regarding and deceitful piece of work.
A disclaimer at the very beginning says, “Members of the Royal family refused to comment on the content within this series”. It’s not the last instance of creativity with the truth. The palace claimed yesterday that they weren’t even asked to respond. And no wonder. In a butter-wouldn’t-melt way, the compassionate Sussexes never stop hinting at the appalling inadequacy of Harry’s family.
“Even when William and Catherine came over, I was in ripped jeans and bare feet,” chirrups Meghan, contrasting her big-hearted, hippydippy ways (“I’ve always been a hugger”) with the uptight Waleses. Their formality, she says, was “on the outside and the inside and... that was surprising to me”. Perhaps the Waleses had their suspicions that the new Californian girlfriend was a succubus come to spirit away their beloved Harry? Can’t think what gave them that idea.
And how glaringly, woundingly absent is the King. With Diana the presiding fairy godmother of this enchanted fairytale, Charles hardly gets a mention. Harry seems to have a closer relationship with Africa than his own father.
Reflecting on multiple visits to Lesotho since his teens, he says: “The group of friends there had literally brought me up.” Ouch. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.
Moving on from the “huge level of unconscious bias in the family”, Harry rudely contrasts his own marriage with that of his relatives. “For so many people in the family, especially the men, there can be a temptation to marry someone who fulfils the mould rather than someone you’re destined to be with.” In choosing Meghan, Harry had, of course, overturned that hereditary pattern of “head rather than heart. I am my mother’s son”.
Protecting Meghan from Diana’s fate is clearly the burning obsession of the Duke’s life: it has fuelled an ugly paranoia that totally disfigures this documentary. I was a journalist during the period of the couple’s engagement and wedding and the coverage was overwhelmingly positive, ecstatic even. The media thought Harry’s girlfriend was a wonderful breath of fresh air, not “anti-christ Meghan” as she is called in one of several highlyselective headlines featured here.
There is a comical scene at the start of episode two in which Harry and Meghan are in a car anxiously looking around for paparazzi.
“Do we have that pap on a scooter?”
Like a high-end car advert, there are frictionless gearchanges from rapture to deepening threat
Meghan frets. There are no cameras, darling, relax. So desperate are the Sussexes to show evidence of media harassment that Netflix had to use stock footage from events they weren’t even involved in.
There is a similarly bonkers and frankly offensive insistence that the “unfair” treatment of the Duchess arose from racism. The historian David Olusoga makes several portentous appearances to ram home the link between the monarchy and the slave trade. The Commonwealth, to which our late Queen devoted her life, is described as Britain “calculating a system of protecting its capitalist interests”. When did Prince Harry become a Marxist? And no mention either of Her Majesty honouring Harry and Meghan as special Commonwealth ambassadors to spread the very tolerance they claim to champion.
Most absurd of all – trust me, it’s a hotly contested field – is the roping in of the Brexit vote as an explanation for anti-meghan sentiment, rather than her own high-handed behaviour. “Immigration is at the centre of Brexit… and immigration is often a cipher for race,” avers Olusoga. Never mind that the vast majority of immigration from the EU was of white people. Never mind the millions of decent people cheering on that unsurpassably beautiful and hopeful day in May 2018 when the UK acquired its first biracial princess.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex won an award for “moral courage”. What a joke. They make cowardly attacks on family members who can’t or won’t answer back and dare to call it empathy.
Who knows what further spite the next three episodes will bring, but I predict viewers will have had their fill. With their invitation to the Coronation surely cancelled, Haitch and M have revealed their true royal personas: two Drama Queens.