Harry & Meghan: a serious attempt to set the record straight?

In recent days, the news has been “awash with stories of suffering and struggle”, said Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. Children going to school hungry. Nurses using food banks. Pensioners deciding between heating and eating. Between all this, we have been seeing trailers for a Netflix documentary in which two multimillionaires who live in a mansion in California sob about how hard their lives are.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been complaining about their lot for three years. Last week, the first tranche of their six-part series – part of a $100m deal they struck with Netflix – finally aired, and Deacon wondered: did this couple, who “pride themselves above all else on their empathy and compassion”, pause to consider how their pity party might appear to the eight billion or so people in the world who are less fortunate than they are?

‘Hollow selfmythologising’

“‘What are we doing?’ the couple wonder more than once, as they reflect on their actions in this fever dream of self-aggrandisement,” said Jessie Thompson in The Independent. Harry and Meghan say they want to tell their story – a story they felt unable to tell before, but which they now “seem to tell professionally, for a living”.

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The first three episodes, released last week, focus on their early lives and courtship. It is mainly anodyne stuff: a “mix of melodramatically soundtracked, soft-focused photo montages, doeeyed soppiness and hollow selfmythologising”, plus a “relentless amount of intimate material”. This is a couple who seem to have a “pathological need” to document their lives. They have video diaries, and a photo for every moment; we are even treated to a clip of Meghan whispering down the phone to a friend, as Harry prepares to propose.

They have every right to reveal details of their lives on their terms, but it’s too much: we get it, you are a lovely couple, perfectly in love. Or, as Harry tells us, in one of several scenes that feel curiously unnatural, “This is a great love story, and the craziest thing is, I think it is just getting started.”

Those hoping for bombshells will be disappointed, said Alexander Larman in The Spectator. The first part of this “interminable” documentary goes over wearily familiar ground, as it contrasts life in stuffy Britain (largely seen in monochrome) with sunny California.

There are a few sideswipes at Harry’s family. King Charles may have been hurt by his son’s assertion that he was “brought up” in Africa. The Prince and Princess of Wales may have been irked by Harry’s claim that whereas he married for love, other royals have had to marry women who “fit the mould”. But there is no “full-frontal assault” on the family. Instead, we get an “earnest history lesson” (courtesy of David Olusoga, who offers context on racial issues), “self-consciously goofy romantic comedy, and a salutary reminder of how awful the British press is”.

‘Heroes of social justice’

If Harry seethes with rage, you can hardly blame him, said Ayesha Hazarika in The i newspaper. This is a man who spent his childhood in the glare of publicity; who was paraded for the cameras days after his mother had been killed fleeing the paparazzi. Of course he wanted to protect Meghan from the misery inflicted on Diana and other women who have married into the institution – especially when, on top of the usual meanspirited scrutiny, she had to contend with racism, unconscious and otherwise, including a torrent of filth online.

And when Harry talks about royal briefing wars, planted stories and “dirty tricks”, he is not wrong, said Rob Lownie on UnHerd. There is good evidence that other royal households were briefing against him and Meghan.

Sections of the right-wing press feasted on it, said Jim Waterson in The Guardian, because they found that their readers relished stories about the Sussexes. Now the couple’s documentary is driving more traffic to the very news outlets they condemn.

The liberal left went the other way, and decided the couple were “heroes of social justice”, said Ian Dunt in The i newspaper, which is equally absurd. Some of what they say makes no sense. For instance, Meghan claims she had no idea that she’d have to curtsey to the Queen (she says she thought it was a “joke”, then mocks the procedure). What kind of situation did she think she was entering when she opted to marry a prince?

She says she was given no preparation for royal life, said Jennie Bond in the Daily Mirror. If that is true (and royal insiders say it is not), Harry is partly to blame. He should have taken more time to explain to her, for instance, that in the Firm, there is a hierarchy – and that she’d have to conform to it, however stultifying that might be.

Harry was struggling with it himself, said Tanya Gold on UnHerd; and in Meghan, he found someone strong enough to take him away. But he is only half free, because he is still a prince, “with all the expectations” of a prince, and still relying on the “attention without merit” that his royal status bestows. He may have moved to California, but he has not travelled all that far.