Courtesy of Prince Harry and Meghan/Netflix
“They are like two high schoolers in love,” my flatmate says, half an hour into the first episode of Harry & Meghan, Netflix’s six-part docuseries on the royal couple that premiered on Dec. 8. The streaming giant cheekily dubbed the launch as a “global event,” and, for all those who mocked its gall, perhaps it’s telling that mere minutes after the series released, Netflix reportedly crashed (?!) from too much traffic.
Since the first trailer dropped on Dec. 1, both royal enthusiasts and skeptics awaited the series release with bated breath, hoping that the loose-lipped couple would drop more truth bombs about the mysterious institution that is the royal family. Well, sorry to disappoint but Part 1, containing the first three episodes, reveals little in the name of damning secrets about “the firm.” Instead, as my flatmate rightly describes it, the series shows two people so disgustingly in love that it puts Nicholas Sparks to shame. He jokes, she laughs; she teases and he plays along with a shy smile. They are so saccharine it hurts to not be cuffed with your own romance while watching them.
Sure the words are sweet, but what captured their relationship best and kept me hooked for three long hours is the medium that Harry and Meghan choose to tell their story. By recording videos on their iPhones like so many of us do, it creates a sense of intimacy that matters more than the (not always juicy) content. It creeps up on you slowly, making you empathize before you realize it. Episode 1 opens with a frazzled Harry talking to his front-facing camera. The first voice we hear in the series is his deep and pained sigh. The captions reveal that the clip is from March 2020 and was filmed at the Windsor Suite of London’s Heathrow Airport. As the portrait mode video fills the screen, Harry says, “Hi, so we’re here on er, Tues…Wednesday, the something of March. Um, we’ve just finished, um, two weeks, our final push, our last stint of royal engagements.”