Conventionally in TV world, there would be a major documentary on Meghan and Harry’s riveting story of love, loss and royal disaffection to be made, in which, seated decorously on a sofa, we would hear the couple’s point of view, with balancing coverage from defenders of the present raft of royals or their porte-paroles. Netflix ‘s Harry and Meghan (note the diplomatic order of the stars), is very much not that. Instead, it is the supreme iteration of a form the couple have already embraced with proven impact – the “Oprahfication” of confessional television, and its claim that a single lens on lived experience is the “real” truth when, as the late Queen’s spokesman carefully put it, “recollections may vary”.
Credit where it’s due, the couple turn out to be adept at this mode, having had a warm-up outing with the queen of the format, Oprah Winfrey last year, which aired their unhappiness about the Duchess of Sussex’s treatment on arriving in the royal fiefdom, and raised the spectre of racism in the bosom of the (real-life) Crown. That however, was a mere warm-up for the sheer sound and fury of this multi-part reckoning with the monarchy and its tentacles.
