Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Meghan Markle is the unluckiest lucky girl in the world. Her life is a fairytale and, as with all fairy tales, it’s a life where the kind and beautiful princess is threatened by the evil forces without. After a nightmare in England, trapped inside a draughty, wicked castle, she fled to America, where the next act of her tale was ruined by an act of God. Her Netflix show With Love, Meghan was meant to come out in January — but in the wake of wildfires that devastated her native California and killed at least 29 people, it was hastily delayed. This decision, it turns out, was a sensible one. With Love, Meghan was finally released this week, having risked appearing tone-deaf in the midst of one of the biggest natural disasters in the state’s history. It would have been harder back in January to enjoy watching Meghan gather herbs, make homemade bath salts and balloon arches, put nasturtium into ice-cube trays and decant plastic bags of pretzels into nicer plastic bags. All while royalty-free music tinkles in the background of endless montages, slow-motion shots of foaming cafetières and hikes in the picturesque California mountains (“I feel like this is all fake!” her friend laughs, looking at the view). Even outside the context of fire and brimstone, it’s difficult to work out the tone that Meghan — that’s Meghan Sussex now, not Markle, she chastises guest Mindy Kaling — wants to strike with her eight-episode streaming series.Aesthetically more similar to early Martha Stewart than to today’s popular cookery content — enjoyably amateurish TikTok videos, or chaotic YouTube shows such as Bon Appétit and Dessert Person — With Love, Megan is carefully curated and gorgeous, and a million miles away from the apparent authenticity that Gen-Z audiences hanker for. But Meghan, 43, is a millennial, and so this is a millennial show. It’s filled with dated quips from its host (“my bacon brings all the boys to the yard”) and artfully arranged Instagram recipes, designed to be viewed from above, as if scrolling the grid. Crudités feature heavily enough (four episodes) to influence me into embracing them. It’s a stage-dressed version of life with the contrast turned up . . . Nobody is making meals here, they’re making moments, they’re having experiencesA beautiful and empty pastiche of a traditional cooking show, With Love, Meghan is not quite food, not quite lifestyle, not quite reality. The resulting mish-mash vibe is an oddly saccharine portrayal of life for Montecito millionaire moms, sitting somewhere between a Nancy Meyers movie and reality shows such as Queer Eye. Everyone has aligned their chakras and there are more embraces than a RuPaul’s Drag Race confessional scene. Everyone’s aesthetic seems to sit somewhere between Stepford Wife and Trad Wife. Everyone is smiling and well-meaning, lightweight but imbued with goodness. Everyone wears pastels and has an identical Utah curls blowout. And everyone loves Meghan. Vibes wise, With Love, Meghan is mid-2010s wedding, at sunset, in a barn. It’s a first dance set to “Little Lion Man” by Mumford & Sons. It’s beech. It’s mason jars personalised with handwritten name tags. It’s Etsy, living in Williamsburg, voting for Hillary Clinton, watching Broad City. It’s Pinterest, working at BuzzFeed, riding a fixie bike. It’s Instagram influencer chic. In each episode we join Meghan, barefoot and in a series of tastefully draped Loro Piana knits and skinny jeans, beaming beatifically and referring to herself in the third person as “Mama” as she entertains a series of beautiful and impressive guests. The chef Roy Choi shows up, along with Meg’s make-up artist, Tatcha founder Vicky Tsai and assorted girlfriends. Throughout Meghan dispenses goofy non-sequiturs (“good vibes for good hives”). The show’s attempts at realism, such as showing Meghan making coffee for the crew, inevitably fall slightly flat. The best way to think of With Love, Meghan is as an extension of her lifestyle blog. The Tig folded in 2017 before her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry (who has a short cameo, floating in to enjoy brunch) but now it’s been reimagined, its 2010s aesthetics preserved in amber. The Netflix show is Tig-core brought to life. It embodies the “millennial cringe” that Gen-Zers complain about, but also another quintessentially millennial trait: optimism.Meghan is not a traditional TV host (visiting her seems fairly exhausting), but she is a traditional influencer. And, appropriately then, her earnest optimism is infectious. You want to root for her. You want to nod encouragingly at the screen while Meghan makes homemade biscuits for her elderly dog Guy. You want her to enjoy her elegant and sun-bleached life, even if you would not want to be stuck next to her at hot yoga. If her cardinal sin is that she’s just a bit basic, then there are worse things to be. Her aggressively Montecito vibe — nobody outside Los Angeles would describe a naked cake as “beautiful on the inside” — is tedious but it isn’t criminal. In fact, it’s possibly the perfect recipe for a lifestyle star in the making. Meghan hasn’t created an aspirational, easy-to-follow traditional cookery show, but something different. With Love, Meghan is an easily digestible, stage-dressed version of life with the contrast turned up, something to stick on in the background while you mindlessly scroll. Nobody is making meals here, they’re making moments; they’re not having fun, they’re having experiences. As the episodes went on, I found myself watching it passively and becoming lulled, charmed, even . . . influenced. If you can embrace its sun-tea-drinking, elevating-the-everyday, essential-oil-enjoying silliness, With Love, Meghan is almost soothing. Like a very long targeted Instagram ad, it’s indulgent and edited, a lifestyle show for a lifestyle nobody can have, produced inside a bubble. But a bubble that’s undeniably nice to look at. I say this with love, Meghan. On Netflix now
