On seeing the news that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, had signed on to produce a new drama show for Netflix, my initial reaction was not unakin to that of Brenda from Bristol hearing about the UK’s 2017 snap election – “you’re joking – not another one”.
It feels like you should, generally, be on the Sussexes’s side. Despite his family wealth, Prince Harry had a miserable childhood, losing his mother far too young and in the most awful circumstances imaginable – having to grieve while the world gawked on. His adolescence was trawled over by the media. When he finally met his wife, she was so bombarded with vitriol by the media – and allegedly by other members of the Royal Family – that they fled to the other side of the world. They deserve a chance at a happy life.
However… it doesn’t necessarily feel like television, or even entertainment, is truly their route to happiness. They certainly seem to have struggled to make audiences happy. With Love, Meghan, the lifestyle show the couple made for Netflix, was supposed to be about the joys of homey domesticity but guest segments often looked like hostage videos. When the show wasn’t actually painful to watch, it was painfully boring.
Harry’s biggest contribution to the couple’s old Netflix deal, apart from his Invictus Games series, was a documentary about polo, in which he barely featured, and which sunk without trace. Despite this, Netflix and the Sussexes alike are returning to the world of polo, this time as a drama, which the former royals will executive produce.
Is this what starting afresh looks like, though? Really? This whole phase of Harry and Meghan’s life was supposed to be about carving out an income and an identity free of the British Royal Family – having supposedly got that out of their systems with the publication of Harry’s memoir Spare and the subsequent media interviews and furore around it.
Polo is never going to mark a clean break from the British aristocracy, even if the show is somehow a triumph. Heated Rivalry, after all, showed audiences can buy into TV dramas about sports they know and care nothing of, if the plot is right. But even if this show somehow breaks the trend of the Sussexes’s subpar television run, it isn’t going to do anything to carve out an independent identity for them – polo is the stuff of Windsor, not Montecito.
The Sussexes are rapidly getting caught in the same trap that seems to catch anyone cut adrift of the British Royal Family. Used to a certain lifestyle, and in need of the funds to sustain it, they have to find an income, they find that almost anyone who wants to finance them is only interested in their connection to the institution they have just left. The more they try to define themselves on their own terms, the more it turns out their identity is just… semi-detached British royalty.
Harry and Meghan have staked their future on making television. Sadly, so far, they seem to be bad at it. Polo is not going to save them. The reports on supposed drama behind the scenes between the Sussexes and their would-be business partners have been far juicier than anything that’s made it on camera. Maybe, if they must stick with this, that should be their next production?
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source inews.co.uk ’
