Review | Netflix docuseries ‘Harry & Meghan’ is yet another royal rehash

A still from the Netflix docuseries 'Harry and Meghan'.

Netflix’s new docuseries Harry and Meghan is like a strategic, roundabout attack on the British paparazzi. It doesn’t reveal anything new; it doesn’t make the couple, Prince Harry and Megan Markle, who relinquished their royal patronages, not returning as working members of the royal family in February 2021, any more abidingly rebellious or “normal” whichever way you look at it. The attack on the media, forever the ambushing force and disruptor to the UK’s royal family, seems to be the raison d’être of this docuseries — a royal smirk that says you screwed us, and now we get to tell our own stories and get a £112 million deal with the world’s most well-known streaming giant.

The docuseries will have six episodes in two parts; the first part with the first three episodes are streaming on Netflix now.

Shot luxuriously and juxtaposed with archives from both their childhood as well as early adulthood before they first met on Instagram — the main purpose of the juxtaposition fulfilling the structural purpose of making the narrative resemble a documentary version of a fairy tale/rom-com — Harry & Meghan takes time to tease out the details of their lives. Most of these details are known. What we get from the film is their reaction to the details: outrage and self-pity, mostly. The third ends with the lead-up to the royal wedding with a disinterested byte from Meghan’s most celebrated friend, tennis champion Serena Williams.

Directed by Liz Garbus (after Garrett Bradley, who directed the critically acclaimed Netflix docuseries Naomi Osaka, was fired following a disagreement with the couple), the series begins with them and their two children, blissful after they decide, in Meghan’s words, “get to the other side of all this.” And then we see that “all this” through footage of them being followed and harassed by paparazzi everywhere they go. There is a lot of often-seen footage of Princess Diana’s interviews, archival footage of her being mother and ambassador of all the popularity she enjoyed the world over. “I am my mother’s son,” Harry points out, and later goes on to emphasise about his wife, “So much of how she is, is so much like my mom…the warmth, the compassion.” Meghan is projected as the rebellious outsider — she was “the little activist” in childhood, her mom says, and then we are assured, “Meghan feeds through activism.”

The narrative has cutaways to give the audience a history lesson on racism in the UK — we know how slavery fuelled the British empire early on, and lo and behold, how erstwhile slave owners were heavily compensated by the British government. Meghan is the overarching victim — the interviews point out relentlessly how her mixed-race lineage was the reason the media gave her such a raw deal. “Behind the scenes of all that, I was turtling,” Meghan says, and that seems to be the refrain of the three episodes so far. Thomas Markle, Megan’s father, is of course, the villain as we already know. The royal family’s oppressive traditions make the backdrop, not really spelled out but abundantly suggested.

So far, Meghan, her fabulous life before as a Hollywood actress and as a caged princess after she is engaged to Harry, is the point of this series. It’s pretty much an exercise in PR for her, much like the “royal correspondents” we get to know of — the journalists who officially write about the royals, in Harry’s words, “an extended PR arm of the royal family”.

The expectations for the next three episodes are low. But also high, if you still want to spend a weekend trying to figure out what really makes British royalty so very difficult to endure.