Here’s Looking At You, Kid: Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex with meet athletes and … [+] their supporters at the athletics competition on day 2 of the Invictus Games 2020 at Zuiderpark on April 17, 2022 in The Hague, Netherlands. (Photo by Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images)Getty Images
That Netflix would drop the first three episodes of its ‘Harry & Meghan’ docu-/reality-show series on December 8 has been well-bruited about the globe. But the fact that “Volume 1” would land at 8 a.m. in the middle of London’s mad pre-Xmas Thursday drive time — put differently, in time for the coursing dogs of the British press to set up live blogs as they themselves streamed it — has meant this morning that all of Britain, aka, those British who were not locked before some kind of monitor streaming it themselves, could at least get the full dose of the instant high dudgeon generated on Fleet Street by the thing.

The pointed release of it at the beginning of the British working day is meaningful. It means that Netflix executives know where their docu-vehicle would have the greatest and most lasting impact. Suffice it to say that the drop hit London rather like the disaster-asteroid in every Grade B asteroid-doomsday film ever made. As our best astronomers and astrophysicists know, one metric of an asteroid impact is in the “ejecta,” the stuff that is kicked up by impact. This impact kicked up a lot of ejecta in London this morning.

Fairly seen, that’s mainly good for Netflix, which has been notably suffering a downtick of late. Second, the drop — in London alone, with a much longer, bigger and arguably slower burn in the States — means that Ted Sarandos’ and Liz Garbus’ push to have the series out by Christmas was, again, for the company, a good decision. Finally, the series may, in the short term at a minimum, be good for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in their new chosen profession of producers and/or generators of — to use their parlance — “impactful” entertainment.

But in this case the larger, overarching questions about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s efforts in selling and doing this series remain in the air, and that sort of ejecta is going to take quite some time to settle. What effect the series will have on the ongoing debate between Harry and his family; whether it will be read as ‘fair’ or ‘balanced’ by the world at large; and, on the biggest stage, whether it will ultimately do Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the real people, not the reality stars, any long-term professional good — all these questions remain open. It can even be that the first three hours can help move all these questions and attain a bit more resolution in the near term. But it’s likelier that they won’t just yet.

What isn’t an open question is what the British think of the thing — that’s all out now, and out loud. The majority view in the press — by which we mean not just the “red top” tabs, but the organs of record such as the Times, is primarily, and unsurprisingly, a negative one. Notably, the Guardian, which did live-blog a viewing of the series beginning as soon as it dropped, does take a more sedate, reasoned, if occasionally highly skeptical view of all the couple’s doings.

As for Buckingham Palace, the exchange of artillery fire between the Windsors of Montecito and the Windsors of Buckingham Palace over the particulars of content is just beginning. At the moment it portends to become a more protracted, difficult serve-and-volley that we’ll be able to observe in bits and pieces over the coming months, as the series and its impact settle. But earlier today in London, the Episode 1 chyron stating flatly that members of the royal family “…declined to comment on the content within this series” was fairly quickly and as flatly denied by the Palace, which stated that no Palace official or working royal was contacted by the filmmakers for comment, according to the unnamed source in several dispatches. Bottom line: A minor exchange, testing jabs on stepping out from his corner, as Tyson Fury might make in a first round.

The short-term takeaway is that, despite the ungainly, and at times raucous runup of the couple’s exit from the monarchy, despite the knowledge that a Netflix camera crew has been tagging along with them in Europe, England and the States for quite some time, and despite the several road-signs and ominous intimations in the two trailers that dropped earlier this week, Britain is, still, able to be shocked by this.

The shock is notable and operates on several levels, and since it’s British, there’s much nuance there. It’s important for Americans to understand that no core British royal has ever done anything remotely as revealing of their domestic and/or public, backstage lives as this long, intimate, unscripted series is doing of Prince Harry’s life.
After his much-ballyhooed abdication, the Duke of Windsor was rarely seen in public and even more rarely uttered anything about what he’d done. Royal tell-alls are the chaff of the serving class — the British expect the inevitable ‘betrayals’ by the butlers and/or bodyguards and other staff appearing in Fleet Street tabs as well as in book form.
Diana was the mold breaker of all that. But, significantly, since Diana is the precursor to much of this intramural royal-family strife as well, Diana’s participation in her own revealing BBC interview with the disgraced BBC producer Martin Bashir was gotten (it has emerged, by Bashir) under false pretenses, and her contributions to a book portraying her version of her narrative were given to a third party, not directly to its author.
Bottom line, neither Britain nor its monarchy has ever been here before. It’s all new, un-mapped territory to have a male heir to the throne — which Diana was very much not — go this far.
By “far” is meant (in the British view) several things. Faced with the prospect of having to earn a living, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have, quite naturally, turned to making money from their own narrative. Some of this works, and some of it hasn’t — notably the Spotify podcasts. But the deceptively simply entitled ‘Harry & Meghan’ is very much their biggest production done under contract with their contracted producer, and, it’s important to note, with one of the most talented American directors of non-fiction television, Liz Garbus, helming the project.
Said another way, no matter the view that any British person takes of the project — and there will be differing views — the fact that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are the principal authors and authorizers of ‘Harry & Meghan’ is the reason the series matters so greatly in London and in Britain. They have sold this thing, their narrative. That is its impact, and it is a great one that will continue to be felt in the country and — depending upon the particulars of what is said and shown this week and in next week’s installments — within the royal family.
In both trailers, Harry’s voiceover is as expected austere, dark even, as shots of Meghan Markle apparently weeping, or having just finished doing that, scrolled by, there are snaps of the press running after the couple, and after others, there’s a bit of backstage apprehension before certain formal events, and much obvious emotional turmoil. In the mix of docu-stills were salted a still or so of Diana. “Nobody knows the truth but us,” intones the prince with more than a little foreboding.
In America, the land that created reality television in its many forms high and low, all that portentous beating of the tom-toms will matter far less, as will the equation in Britain that this is the first time any core royal has published anything like those sentiments about royal life. But in Britain, as non-fiction television, the series is revolutionary on that level alone.
Finally, there’s going to be a question for the Windsors of Montecito that the series will not answer but instead will pose, and their answer to that question will shape their lives in America, and more specifically, in Hollywood. The impact of the only half-born series is, already great, and will only grow. The question is whether they are or can be clear with themselves what they really want, or wanted, out of this.