OPINION:
So, for $153 million I’m guessing you could get at least a couple of decent islands or a minor Picasso, or enough Bitcoins to stuff in a medium-sized stocking.
Or, if you happen to be Netflix, for that vast, vast sum of money you can pay for what, so far, amounts to a bunch of Harry and Meghan’s trove of often blurry iPhone photos and home videos.
On Thursday night, the first three episodes of their much, much hyped documentary were released and if the streaming giant had hoped that the monstrous fee they have reportedly promised to pay the couple would equal sensation and thrilling viewing, then I have very bad news.
All Netflix has gotten for whatever vast, vast sum of money it paid the royal outcasts seems to be access to their iCloud account, because the series thus far is bereft of any real new insight or details.
Having sat through all 171 minutes of the first tranche of episodes, there is one very obvious thing to say about Harry & Meghan, both the show and the couple.
It’s boring. They’re boring.
Somehow this documentary, despite featuring two of the most famous people on the planet and helmed by an Oscar-winning director, is a showy, empty nothingburger whose greatest star is their luxurious Montecito home that is heavy on the spa vibes.
The problem, I would wager, is that so far the duke and duchess do not appear to have anything of any real note to tell us.
The show does not offer any new understanding into the Megxit psychodrama or anything of any real substance about the couple, aside from the fact that his proposal involved him getting down on bended knee in their garden and that Harry is really into feeding hummingbirds now. (Someone, somewhere in the bowels of a newsroom right now is yelling “Stop the presses!”)
Netflix has been selling this series as a “global event” which has to be worthy of being hit with some sort of truth in advertising complaints.
In the show’s first trailer, released last week, Meghan says: “When the stakes are this high, doesn’t it make more sense to hear our story from us?”
Turns out their story is that somehow two attractive, not particularly interesting people happened to find one another thanks to the power of a dog Instagram filter and a mutual passion for beanie-wearing.
This is not must-watch TV, this is must-endure TV, worth sticking with if you really want to see countless syrupy happy snaps of ‘Aitch’ and Meg, as we learn the couple are called by their friends.
The level of new information sprinkled across nearly three hours could be easily scribbled on the back of a beer coaster, something I’m guessing that Harry is no longer au fait with, not now he has those birds to feed.
Watch if you have too much time on your hands or have masochistic tendencies or are incredibly deeply invested in the journey of the Sussexes, but otherwise? Let me save you the time.
I can tell you that the biggest reveals is that they actually met via social media after he saw a photo of her on a mutual friend’s account and photos and a brief video from their engagement. It’s sweet and as prosaic as you might expect.
I would argue that the most interesting details is that we hear from Meghan’s friends, her former personal assistant, her makeup artist, her mother Doria Ragland (who should probably win some sort of prize for her handling of the press and composure), her agent, her niece, her former TV co-stars, her childhood headmistress and her Suits producer.
And what of our prince? The only person from his life who they appear to have been able to dredge up to speak on his behalf is an old chum from Eton who is simply referred to as Nicky, no surname provided.
This first half of this series is like the TV equivalent of a takeaway pad see ew from a suburban Thai joint, in that it is all so horribly predictable. Our heroes are the loved-up Aitch and Emm, whose journey we get to experience thanks to so many selfies you have to wonder how often during those early days of their relationship their phones were actually away. The villain, meanwhile, is exactly who you would think it would be in the form of the British press. They are bad. Very bad.
We are treated to shot after shot of Diana, Princess of Wales, being physically hounded and chased by the ravening paps in the 90s, and plenty of shots of a confused, angry-looking young Harry being forced to suffer through press calls and walkabouts before we move onto the media deluge that Meghan faced after they were outed as a couple in late 2016.
While I’m sure someone inside Netflix HQ is currently polishing a press release trumpeting that Harry & Meghan is a global ratings triumph, the reality is this series so far is nearly entirely lacking in any real new information, perspective or much of interest if you aren’t into looking at other people’s holiday photos or baby videos.
If anyone had been harbouring any hopes that, at least in this first round, we might be in for some intra-palace mud-slinging or some explosive revelations equally devastating to those made during their Oprah interview of institutional racism and cruelty, please prepare yourself for plenty of disappointment.
If anyone inside Buckingham Palace or Clarence House of Kensington Palace had been busy chewing their nails or stress-eating their way through a bag of boiled sweets, they need never have feared.
The closest the Sussexes get to taking a genuine swing at his family is when Harry is talking about the harassment Meghan faced: “So it was almost like a rite of passage, and some of the members of the family were like ‘my wife had to go through that, so why should your girlfriend be treated any differently? Why should you get special treatment? Why should she be protected?’”
Golly gosh, whoever could he be talking about?
Meghan gets her chance when she talks about meeting her now sister and brother-in-law for the first time, saying: “I was a hugger. I’ve always been a hugger, I didn’t realise that that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.
“I guess I started to understand very quickly that the formality on the outside carried through on the inside.
“There is a forward-facing way of being, and then you close the door and go ‘You can relax now’, but that formality carries over on both sides. And that was surprising to me.”
So, Kate was not into spontaneous clutching by relative strangers and photographers made Meghan’s life hell. Is any of this worth even a slither of $153 million?
Because having sat through three episodes, the world has not gotten any new insight into Harry’s relationship with his family, either before or after he met his wife, aside from the fact his mother was very funny and great at the whole mum business. We have not heard a single thing from Harry about his father, you know, the King, or his grandmother the late Queen or really anything much about his experience of growing up inside the Royal Family except the British press in the 80s and 90s were absolute s***s a lot of the time.
When episode three finishes, we are on the eve of their wedding and who knows, maybe director Liz Garbus decided to save all the really devastating stuff for the second “volume” (truly).
But the most shocking thing about Harry & Meghan is that despite the global fascination with the people starring in this show; despite the perfect lighting and Meghan’s perfect blow-dry and what must have been a stonking archival footage budget, this is just not good TV, the whole thing sitting at some odd midway point between glossy reality fare and a well-made history lesson about Britain’s colonial and slave-trading past.
The real winner here? I’d say it’s those hummingbirds. I bet Hollywood is on the phone right now trying to get a second series out of ‘em.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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