Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, keeps bees. Sit with that information, then ask yourself how you feel about it. Is it enraging? Do you find the hobby cloying, or the woman doing it? If you, like me, are a connoisseur of ridiculous how-to TV, said pastime fits the profile of a woman of means with a backyard chicken coop and a Viking range. Dipping a pedicured toe into apiculture feels like the next logical step and is typical of the lifestyle programming “With Love, Meghan” recreates.
The duchess announces her entrance by speaking “in our bee voice,” a low volume meant to maintain calm as she and her beekeeper mentor collect honey from their hive. “Good vibes for good hives,” she whispers.
Despite what Netflix would have you believe, this show reimagines next to nothing.
Approaching “With Love, Meghan” devoid of feeling seems impossible if you subscribe to the tabloid interpretation of her existence, which many do. The duchess freights whatever products she releases with opinion and emotions, as we’ll soon see once her recently renamed, freshly launched brand As Ever gets up and running.
People detest her and Prince Harry for stepping back from their royal duties and even more so for going public about what life was like for them. Some can’t stand her for being a Black woman who candidly revealed the royal family’s racism or for being a Black woman with a series in a genre nearly exclusively dominated by white women.
And Meghan’s telegenic presence is effortless. That “Suits” role didn’t materialize from the ether. Sadly, some people will consider that competency as more of a strike than the paucity of emotional resonance that places her show a step or two above a Williams-Sonoma catalogue.
The main crime the duchess commits in “With Love, Meghan” is creating a middling show that is, at worst, inoffensive.
Despite what Netflix would have you believe, this show reimagines next to nothing. It’s more accurate to say that it channels the standard setters: the sun-soaked garden and foodie fantasy of “Martha Stewart Living,” the high-toned warmth of “The Barefoot Contessa,” the sensual glamor of Nigella Lawson lustily ripping into a chicken leg.
Meghan is a millionairess from humble beginnings, we’re frequently reminded. Sure, she married a British prince and lives in Montecito, CA. Yes, she has time to harvest honey from her hive, bake it into a cake and make beeswax candles. She makes preserves from berries she grows in her garden and gifts them to her friends. All others will soon be welcome to pay cash.
It’s a lovely landing for a latchkey kid who grew up eating Jack in the Box, and we’re not mad at it. She shares that trivia crumb with a celebrity friend who casually asks if she grew up on the kind of food she makes on her show, by the way.
Meghan arrives at the graceful living genre saddled with the public’s prejudices cemented in place, foremost being that a segment of its audience will despise whatever she does, chiding her for being rich and out of touch.
Except nothing in “With Love, Meghan” feels “by the way.” The celebrity formerly known as Meghan Markle, star of “Suits” – we’ll explain later – has engineered “With Love, Meghan” to burnish her hostess bona fides and amiability. Her food prep and craft-making inspire greeting card musings, as in a scene when she and a friend layer a cake with raspberry preserves and buttercream but leave it unfrosted on the sides.
“There’s something really satisfying about a cake that is bare on the outside, but she’s so beautiful on the inside,” Meghan observes later. “And you just don’t know how good she is until you go deep and you get to know her better.” So true. But wait — is she talking about the cake, or herself?
I’m being cynical, because Meghan is earnest about sincerity. The house featured in “With Love, Meghan” is not hers; she cops to that in the first episode. But the guest basket for her visiting friend, makeup artist Daniel Martin, is simple, hand-prepared and includes Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzels.
Her temporary kitchen is gleaming white and appointed with items commonplace and ridiculous, but useful. She makes food for the crew and looks legitimately elated to watch one of them sink his teeth into a gooey breakfast sandwich. There are few occasions that don’t call for edible flower sprinkles which, you guessed it, are among the items she’s selling on her website. We’re treated to frequent appearances by the Sussexes’ sleepy beagle Guy, who died in January, but not before enjoying a lifetime of homemade dog biscuits Meghan prepares with leftover bacon.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in “With Love, Meghan” (Jenna Peffley/Netflix)
Multiple Emmy-winner Michael Steed, known for his work on “The Mind of a Chef” and “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” directs these episodes, ensuring every food closeup makes you want to lick the screen or sniff it if he’s zooming in on lavender buds.
As for instructions on how to make those dishes delicious, those are sporadically offered. If Meghan told you how to do everything, you wouldn’t buy her housewares. Hence we did not learn how to make the donuts Meghan bakes for Chef Roy Choi in the third episode — one of the series’ best, because Meghan steps aside to let Choi teach us about simple Korean culinary techniques. She’s a capable home cook, but the kind of apt, curious chef’s assistant that makes the process fun to watch.
We did, however, learn that Harry likes his food salty. Yes, Meghan speaks lovingly of Harry and the kids in “With Love” but he only shows up in the finale’s closing moments, while Archie and Lilibet are mentioned but never seen.
Most lifestyle programming is some combination of inspirational and aspirational as opposed to expressly instructional. That’s been true since Stewart banked on knowing that women who had rose gardens weren’t her target audience, squarely aiming at the many millions more who didn’t but dreamed of planting one outside a home they had yet to own. People didn’t hate her for this guiding principle at first because they didn’t know her. Resentment came later.
“With Love, Meghan” is like a Calm app episode with a host swaddled in creamy neutral tones.
In contrast, British media primed U.K. readers and American royalists to despise Meghan before she and Prince Harry decamped for Canada. Thus, she arrives at the graceful living genre saddled with the public’s prejudices cemented in place, foremost being that a segment of its audience will despise whatever she does, chiding her for being rich and out of touch.
Some of that can’t be helped. When Meghan says, “My friend Mindy is going to come by,” we know she’s not talking about any old rando. She’s hosting Mindy Kaling, identified as “Actress, Producer & Friend.” As Kaling settles in she casually refers to her hostess as Meghan Markle, and the duchess, with a giggle, gently reminds her that she goes by Sussex now. “You have kids, and you go, ‘No, I share my name with my children. . . it just means so much to go, ‘This is our family name. Our little family name.’”
Those in a mood to eat the rich might lurch for their knife drawer regardless of how plainspoken she is.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Mindy Kaling in “With Love, Meghan” (Justin Coit/Netflix)
Humility and practicality are rarely top of mind in shows like this although, with the right mold, anyone could pull off the frozen orange juice roses Meghan makes for brunch mimosas with her friends.
“I’ve always loved just taking something simple and elevating it,” Meghan shares in the fifth episode, “Surprise and Delight.” That quote got lots of play in the widely hated preview trailer for “With Love, Meghan” as evidence of the show’s lack of innovation or necessity.
According to another Meghan, McCain, dropping this show in our time of extreme economic uncertainty is tone-deaf. Never mind the hypocrisy of who’s expressing that opinion. Never mind the irony of a wealthy white woman insisting that a Black American royal should have made a show about “helping [to] bring fresh food to food deserts in low income neighborhoods” when, from what I can tell, she’s not volunteering in that space.
Anyway, these complaints misunderstood why homemaking shows are an evergreen draw. Lifestyle TV might as well be sedatives or anti-depressants, the medicine people want in tumultuous times.
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“With Love, Meghan” is like a Calm app episode with a host swaddled in creamy neutral tones. Meghan radiates serenity and smiles brightly as she writes her own menus in impeccable calligraphy, guided by renowned chef Alice Waters. In another episode, she slides pans of cake batter into her oven and blithely coos, “Good night, sweetheart.”
My husband wandered into the room during my “With Love, Meghan” viewing, took in a second or two of her presentation, and described Meghan’s soothing manner of speech as the soundtrack to euthanasia.
He’s not wrong. What Patsy Stone said about morning television on “Absolutely Fabulous” decades ago applies here: “My God! If they could market that in pill form, Switzerland would be plunged into a recession.”
All of which is to say, “With Love, Meghan” is relaxing enough to slip into for hours without leaving much of a memory in its wake.
“The only thing better than eating food is making food for someone and watching them eat it with delight,” she says, and we believe her, although we don’t need “With Love, Meghan” to tell us that. Stewart, Ina Garten, Joanna Gaines, Julia Child and many others passed along similar wisdom before her. They just happened to come first, and from relatively anonymous beginnings.
Meghan was famous before she was a duchess and is figuring out whether her passion for the “elevated” and “delightful” can meet the public’s obsession with her, for good or ill. Her show makes it difficult to be furious at that attempt, and happens to be very easy to stream as the background buzz of daily life.
All episodes of “With Love, Meghan” are streaming on Netflix.
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