The Duchess of Sussex is back on Netflix with a Christmas special full of unhinged behaviour
You will be aware by now of the Duchess of Sussex’s exploits as a professional arts-and-craftser, a purveyor of aesthetic je-ne-sais-quois, a Blue Peter presenter for adults who think being served a cocktail in a teacup is a good thing. Just this year we have already been treated to two full seasons of her Netflix show With Love, Meghan, which on first impression was an extraordinary feat of fake nothingness in which she showed us how to… put things in jars? Make our house guests so comfortable they feel guilty for coming? Drop five grand on a children’s party to which no children are invited? The list goes on.
Thought it was over? Thought it couldn’t get worse? Think again: it’s Christmas, and if that’s not an excuse for another hour of thinly veiled millennial uptightness and making chocolate “reindeer chow” to put in “beautiful vessels”, instead of just buying a tin of Quality Street like a normal person, then I don’t know what is.
In many ways, the yuletide makes Meghan’s unhinged behaviour more socially acceptable, but in other ways it makes everything a lot, lot worse.
One is reminded almost immediately of the scene in Love Actually in which Alan Rickman is forced to endure Rowan Atkinson, as a shop assistant, adorning a Christmas gift for his bit on the side with every ribbon, aromatic and decorative plant imaginable. That’s how watching the “Holiday Special” of With Love, Meghan feels, except it goes on for 56 minutes and you are not having an exciting extramarital affair. “You can put a bow on it, you can put a bell on it, you can put a sprig of anything on it!” she says cheerfully at one point, and you want to scream “No! No bloody holly!”
Homely Christmas shows are nothing new, of course. Meghan comes off as positively Anglophile as she explains to her restaurateur friend Will Guidara that over here, we pull Christmas crackers round the table with our arms crossed (“No way. That’s awesome,” he gushes); the UK has got a couple of Christmas crafters of its own, from jolly-gingerbread-house Kirstie Allsopp to cheapskate princess Stacey Solomon.
But nobody does sincere quite like Meghan, and she treats her mission with profound seriousness and very little humour. “To me, it’s about grace. Grace is about making people feel comfortable.” Quick, get Confucius on the blower, he’s going to want to hear this.
Things do feel more relaxed since the fever dream of the first season, and the festive atmosphere in Montecito is undeniable. Yet despite her continued insistence that this is all just fun, just cookies, just Christmas, the underlying message remains more than a little perfectionistic.
She strings her Christmas lights on the inside and the outside, don’t you know. “Tis the seasoning,” she writes, in impeccable calligraphy, on a blackboard of a larder that is not hers, beaming so hard she risks popping a forehead vein. When wrapping a gift in a particularly considered way, she explains: “If you fold it outwardly instead of inwardly, it creates a different world.” This is literally world-changing stuff! How chilled can we expect the woman to be?
As usual she is joined for each activity by a stream of guests who seem to agree with her about everything. She tells us before Guidara arrives that she is going to “pick his brain a little bit and say, how do you translate these principles of fine dining hospitality and exceeding expectations and bring them into your home?” – thank God someone’s finally asking. When he does get there, they have a whale of a time, and seem to be in perfect sync. The most important thing when you’re hosting, they agree, is that guests leave – and this part they squeal in unison – with their “HEART FEELING FULL!”
Then there are the two old schoolfriends with whom she non-competitively makes wreaths and who tell her that her “quiche cups” (why not just quiche, for the love of god) look GORGEOUS and BEAUTIFUL, and good old Harry turns up alongside the chef Tom Colioccho to play the perfect appreciative background-husband.
Adding a touch of bemused awkwardness to proceedings is the tennis champion Naomi Osaka, who is invited to enjoy a wreath of tenderstem broccoli and to decorate some crockery using felt tip pens so that she and Meghan – who have clearly never met before – can “get to know each other better”. Osaka seems to have absolutely no idea why she is there, and remains essentially mute as Meghan babbles about “soul-filling” and her terrible tennis-playing.
To be fair, Meghan really has her work cut out: “Shall we go craft?!” she asks, as Osaka looks vaguely bemused, and Meghan has no choice but to cut in again: “Let’s go craft!” Fear not, she absolutely shows her up, praising Osaka for blobbing three snowman’s coal buttons on a mug (“you’ve just like, gone to town!”) as she designs plates that you could conceivably buy for £35 a pop in John Lewis.
And yet… and yet. It is utterly ridiculous, so why am I now wondering whether I should buy some wax seals to adorn my presents, or indeed repurpose one of my many spare silk scarves as a shroud for an unwrappable bottle of wine?
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“We’ve all been there… The only possible option is to put this thing in a gift bag,” she says, brandishing a soft toy rabbit. God, so relatable. She turns the wrapping paper into a tasteful Christmas cracker using ribbons, some artful snips and a complicated folding technique, our furry friend nestled happily inside. And why not? Why not make things beautiful? Why not lose your mind? It’s Christmas!!!
As always, the problem with this show is that it is premised on a contradiction – it’s all so terribly simple and easy, except in reality it is indisputably difficult and complicated, unless you happen to be in a TV studio with limitless supplies of Tattinger and PVA glue. But if you’re going to imbibe this escapist nonsense, or, indeed, make gougères, infuse food colouring with almond oil or talk about “the perfect imperfection that comes from human connection”, it might as well be at Christmas, when everyone else has gone just as mad as the ever-diligent Duchess.
‘With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration’ is streaming on Netflix
