What was the ‘Harry & Meghan’ show about?

Before Meghan Markle went on her first date with Prince Harry, she scrolled through her Instagram feed.

“Show me what they’re talking about in their feed, not what someone else is saying about them,” as the Duchess of Sussex now explains in the first episode of “Harry & Meghan.” “What they say about themselves: That’s the best barometer.”

It could also be a thesis statement about the series itself: their chance to tell their story on their terms after years (or, in Harry’s case, a lifetime) of not being in control of their narrative . Although in the end, their six-hour Netflix series spread over two consecutive Thursdays was more for them than for us.

Shrouded in mystery until its release, the show’s top-secret launch (no reporters or critics were given advance screenings) would suggest it would be a revelatory event. However, I didn’t learn much new information, especially not near the level of the couple’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey in the spring of 2021.

Of course, not everything has to provide revelation after revelation. But such a high-profile series inherently has those expectations. Instead, the visually well-crafted docuseries, directed by Academy Award nominee Liz Garbus, cover well-documented territory. It confirms what we largely knew about the vicious racism and misogyny Meghan experienced from the British tabloids and social media, aided and abetted by the royal family as an institution. As the two discussed in the docuseries, Buckingham Palace officials essentially threw them — especially her — to the wolves.

We get a window into them as people, often quite endearingly (I giggled at their perfect Oprah impersonations when I visited their Kensington Palace cottage: “No one would believe them!”). And among the many friends and confidants in the documentary who speak at length for the first time, we hear Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, paint a more three-dimensional image of her.

Plus, we get an insight into what went on behind the scenes at key moments. In the beginning, we see how quickly the two tried to get to know each other before the world knew about their relationship and how much they had to do to keep it a secret. In the second half of the series, we see the presence of their decision to leave the royal family in early 2020. They have been working for years after making other plans to move to another Commonwealth country, but still for to – to fulfill his royal role. duties away from the glare of the British tabloids.

But it’s also striking how naive they were at various points, such as Meghan underestimating the full force of the tabloid coverage, saying she didn’t realize until much later that people believed what they were reading. Or his response at one point in a 2019 documentary for ABC when a reporter asked her if she was doing well, prompting a rare moment of candor about the toll it had all taken on her. According to Meghan, “I had no idea That it would have been the thing that traveled around the world. It is also significant when he acknowledges his initial naivety about race, a product of growing up with relative privilege afforded by his white appearance. At the same time, it’s hard not to feel for her because she genuinely believed she could change the establishment of the royal family, and her marriage into the family initially seemed to herald the dawn of a new day.

Throughout the series, historical context is added by black British journalists and researchers about racism and colonialism and the continued attempts by British institutions to look away and pretend it’s all in the past. Again, this is not new information. But it can be useful to have everything in one place, and the inclusion of that context elevates “Harry & Meghan” above other celebrity-driven documentaries.

But what was it all for? It’s hard to ask a viewer to spend six hours with this series. Ironically, Netflix’s other show about the royal family — a dramatization, not a documentary — gave more topics for discussion. The most recent season of “The Crown,” which covered Harry’s parents’ divorce, was a bit more interesting.

I can definitely see why this project was important to Meghan and Harry and I sincerely hope it brought them some sort of catharsis. Perhaps for the first time in detail, the docuseries exposes the entrenched system they had to answer to and their lack of control over what they could say (or, more often, couldn’t express). Meghan describes the “orchestrated reality show” that was their most innocuous post-engagement interview. Harry points to the symbiotic relationship between the royal press group, known as the ‘rota’ – made up mainly of tabloid publications – and Buckingham Palace officials.

One of the biggest revelations in the six episodes was Harry describing a controversial meeting in early 2020, just before he and Meghan left the family. According to Harry, his brother Prince William yelled at him. But shortly after the meeting, building officials released a statement saying they would “destroy the story of him bullying us from the family.” Harry says in the documentary.

“I can’t believe it. No one asked me for permission to put my name on a statement like that,” he continued. “For four hours they were happy to lie to protect my brother, but for three years have never been willing to tell the truth, to protect us.”

That was the final cup. No wonder they had to go and find a way to tell their story on their own terms. But it’s possible to believe both of them: they faced some extremely difficult circumstances, but they are and always will be famous, and they have a huge platform that gives them many opportunities to tell this story. They already have, with Meghan’s Spotify podcast earlier this year and Harry’s forthcoming memoir in January. It is argued that these projects are in different settings, serve different purposes and may reach different audiences. This is true. However, it will likely have many overlaps.

The documentary series is part of a wider trend of celebrity-driven films and series being sold as a chance for audiences to get behind-the-scenes access and an intimate portrait of the person. In practice, they are often staged, designed with a celebrity agenda and more surface level than revealing anything deep.

However, the presence of that celebrity often means that the show or film will have an automatic audience. This is especially true for such a famous and newsworthy couple. Meghan and Harry telling their story meant we were going to watch it anyway.

So obviously many of us did. According to Netflix’s internal values28 million households watched the first half of the series in its first four days and it reached the top 10 in 85 countries, which according to Netflix is ​​its biggest documentary debut.

Throughout the docuseries, we are pulled in different directions on how to characterize this story. It is a complicated and often disturbing account of institutional blockages and abuses. But it’s also a simple and magical fairy tale, a love story that was meant to be, as Meghan described in a speech at their wedding, which she read in the final moments of the docuseries.

It is undoubtedly both of these things, and more. But in the end, it’s hard to get past the impression that this docuseries is akin to an Instagram feed, if not as Meghan says from the start. Our personal Instagram feeds tend to be very well curated and not necessarily the best barometer of our lives, just scratching the surface.