It’s hard to imagine there’s any more to say than has already been said about the first half of the Netflix series “Harry & Meghan.” But I urge you to read the reviews, for it is there, unlike in the series itself, that there is a very interesting story.
Until now, there’s been a transatlantic divide over the couple. Traditionally, Americans think they are great, liberated independents speaking truth to power. The English think they are treacherous, self-involved publicity-seekers who are as guilty as the press they despise of milking (and knocking) the institution that created them for money.
But this past week, I googled, searching in vain for an American publication that had a wholly positive review of this series. And I couldn’t find a single one. The New York Times deemed the series a tedious Instagram story, calling it “an image-making exercise for the endless scroll.” Peggy Drexler, writing for CNN, said “it’s self-promotional, self-aggrandizing and, frankly, a little boring.”
It seems that even the liberal U.S. media has finally seen through this paper-thin PR exercise and realized that the couple’s narrative is rather more about self-service than public service, and that, yes, even in our social-media-driven-world there is still such a thing as over-exposure. The series’ audience score on Rotten Tomatoesstands at the time of writing at a miserable 11 percent. That is even worse than the score for the fiasco of a movie that was “Gigli,” which is currently at 13 percent.