The release of Meghan Markle’s new Netflix series has proven to be a strangely divisive topic among viewers.
While the lifestyle show has shot into the streamer’s top 10 since debuting last week, critics were quick to dismiss the format with less-than-favourable reviews, with many social media users sneering at segments for being out of touch.
But as it’s already been renewed for a second season, who’s really got the last laugh?
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If you’ve not had the chance to catch it yet, With Love, Meghan, is a glossy, sun-dappled journey into Meghan’s best tips and tricks for hosting, drawing on her years of home cooking and entertaining, with celebrity guests joining her throughout to either learn from her or impart their own wisdom.
At times, it is admittedly silly – as you may have noted when she advises how you can get wax for homemade candles from ‘your local beekeeper’ - but amid the obvious ridiculousness are moments where you might raise an interested eyebrow.
“If I were not the recipient of this, I would be so mad about this,” Meghan’s friend, actor Mindy Kaling, jokes as she’s handed a yoghurt parfait with peach preserves, topped with flower sprinkles.
But there’s one thing you’re all forgetting: this is not unique to the world of Meghan Markle; this is how this genre of TV works. It’s entirely aspirational, and largely removed from the real world, and that’s what makes it easy to watch.
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This is simply what lifestyle television is. It’s cheap eats without the context of poverty, and healthy recipes without mention of what they’re tackling. It’s fairy lights and sunsets, it’s perpetual happiness.
And whether that should be the case or not – a debate that stretches far beyond this one example - Meghan’s show is merely following a tried and tested format: take ‘Pioneer Woman’ Ree Drummond, for instance, who forged her own lifestyle empire from blogging about being a homemaker on the sprawling ranch run by husband Ladd, who just so happens to hail from Oklahoma’s powerful Drummond ranching family.
It is, of course, in no way relatable to the average viewer, but a long-running Food Network show and extensive back catalogue of books suggest the public interest is there.
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Over in Ina Garten’s luxurious Hamptons mansion, meanwhile, we see her preparing for a dinner party while flashing a smile to the camera with her catchphrase: “How easy is that?”
Across the pond, Nigella’s kitchen pottering comes from a well-crafted BBC set, as Jamie Oliver is regularly seen rummaging around his estate’s vast veg patch for multicoloured tomatoes and designer leaves.
Meghan’s Montecito dreamland is a similar anti-reality that, yes, may rile some people up, but also brings inexplicable comfort to others – many of whom have already been enjoying recreating recipes from the show, suggesting all this may not be as unattainable as people are trying to tell you.
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Sure, it may seem unlikely that you’ll ever host such a twee kids’ garden party, but learning how to make a balloon arch on the cheap might not be the most laughable skill for a TV show to teach you.
You’re unlikely to be welcoming Mindy Kaling for brunch every week, but you might want to try your hand at a frittata for a relatively easy, make-ahead breakfast for a crowd.
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And if you choose to take absolutely nothing from the show, that's also fine. All that's really expected of us is to watch along - although even then, it's well within your power to turn off if it isn't for you.
Those of us who choose to stick around do so knowing that what we're watching is not most people's reality. We are smart enough as consumers to know that Meghan does not work a 9-5 office job five days a week, and that she is both time and money rich enough to be cooking homemade dog biscuits and melting wax for candles.
And if anyone is able to find some level of escapism from that, who are we to say that it's wrong?
Topics: TV And Film, Food and Drink, Meghan Markle
Jess Hardiman