With Love, Meghan (Netflix) Review

With Love Meghan, the lifestyle show from Meghan Markle, won’t convert her detractors, but it provides others with an eager host and sunny vibes.

Fluttering and dancing around the kitchen of a rented Montecito California house, the Duchess of Sussex demonstrates her passion for hosting: arranging floral bouquets, preparing tea, and adding edible flowers to ice cubes. She is obsessed with “elevating the everyday,” giggles at corny wordplay, and has never heard an outfit referred to as a “lewk.” Markle makes for a bubbly, eager-to-please host, moving along the show as though she was trying to win over a disapproving, judgemental neighbor. Perhaps, considering the public perception of Markle, in a way she is. 

Over the course of eight episodes,the Duchess of Sussex demonstrates various tips and tricks for homemaking and hosting parties. Friends, acquaintances and professionals alike, pop into an immaculate, Nancy Meyers worthy kitchen to cook and craft alongside Markle, preparing everything from bath salts, crudité, Korean fried chicken, parfait, and beeswax candles. Every episode is centered around the act of fictitiously getting ready for an event that Markle is throwing later in the night, such as having her best friend, make-up artist Daniel Martin spend the weekend, or throwing a ladies game night. Mindy Kaling shows up in the second episode to help throw a children’s garden party.

The strongest episodes are the ones in which a professional, such as Alice Waters or Roy Choi arrives to demonstrate their speciality. Markle takes on the role of an earnest student, displaying a more relaxed and open affability. The best moment in the show comes as Choi and Markle wax nostalgic about their experiences growing up in Los Angeles. 

Markle is a controversial figure, to say the least. To many, the show will come off as a narcissistic vanity project, a way for her to show off. And the sterile Netflix sheen which coats the proceedings doesn’t help to dissuade that reading either. It all looks a little too stage managed. The review in “Vulture” is headlined by, “ ‘With Love, Meghan’ Pioneers New Frontiers in Unreliability.” and that sentiment is not singular. I believe that such criticism is wrong-headed, and misunderstands the purpose of lifestyle shows. Would you watch Martha Stewart or Ina Garten for relatability? For tips on how to best feed three young kids on a lower middle class budget after a long day at the office? You would be sorely disappointed if you did so.

Martha Stewart Living was filmed on the grounds of Stewart’s Connecticut Colonial Era- Mansion, and on The Barefoot Contessa Garten would shop for produce at high-end shops in the Hamptons. Not exactly relatable. Lifestyle shows, like Martha Stewart Living and The Barefoot Contessa and With Love, Meghan are aspirational. They provide an opportunity for the viewer to daydream about a more glamorous life, the chance to bask in the thought that sometime in the future they will have the space to garden, or the time to design a tablescape or (a suggestion from Stewart) prepare homemade egg salad for their child’s lunchbox. 

Keeping such an understanding in mind – that lifestyle shows are, first and foremost, a fantasy for its audience – With Love, Meghan is capable and pleasant. It’s easy listening television. Frequently intercut with shots of the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean which surround Montecito, the show is aesthetically beautiful. The kitchen doors are always open, revealing a clear blue sky, and the guests are greeted by Markle with a hug and their beverage of choice. The through line for With Love, Meghan is her love of hosting. She functions, not as a teacher and a guide, but as a host, allowing the viewer the opportunity to imagine themselves sipping on Rosé in the kitchen of a Montecito mansion. There are those who will find Markle’s bubbly, eager-to-please energy grating, but the viewer with the right temperament will be able to sink into an appealing daydream. 

Season 1 of With Love, Meghan is now available to watch globally on Netflix. The series was renewed for Season 2 (release date TBA).