It begins with bees. Because, yes, bees are aspirational signifiers of the good life. And yes, bees make beautiful honey for, say, stirring into a sun tea (that would be tea steeped in California sunshine for approx three to four hours) or drizzling into a “beautiful on the inside” cake (which, as far as I can make out, is a Victoria sponge.) But the Duchess of Sussex, who only started beekeeping a year ago but already has “good vibes for good hives”, also sees them as a reminder to do something that scares you a little bit. Like, say, making a tone-deaf lifestyle show in a $8m (£6.3m) Montecito farmhouse while the US and beyond goes to hell in a handcart. “I’m trying to stay in the calm of it because it’s beautiful to be this connected,” she whispers in a low tone, so as not to spook the bees.
Or, indeed, her viewers, who find themselves at the deflating juncture where we can finally judge to our heart’s content the contemporary curio that is With Love, Meghan. Do we really need to though? Gazillions of words, many of them predictably hateful, have already been spewed on what it is actually about, based on the two-minute trailer alone. Is Meghan the ultimate tradwife? A domestic goddess in the wink-wink Nigella vein (if only!)? A fake flaunting her wealth? Is it a cynical money-making exercise (Netflix reportedly paid the Sussexes £78m for their overall deal)? A right-on sister who genuinely cares about diversity? An estranged royal suffering from an incurable case of earnestness? Or, as the New York Times dubbed her, is she “the millennial Martha Stewart of Montecito”?
