Meghan’s Netflix Christmas special ‘mad, sad and self-indulgent’, say critics

Critics have not shared the Duchess of Sussex’s festive cheer about the Christmas special of her Netflix show, with one review calling it “quite mad and a little bit sad” and another advising viewers to take anti-nausea pills before watching.

Meghan shares the UK’s “sweet” tradition of pulling crackers and reveals she puts a love letter inside the one she makes for the Duke of Sussex in the holiday iteration which premiered on the streaming giant on Wednesday.

Reviews have been as brutal as they were for the first two series of With Love, Meghan, with the Telegraph giving it one star, while the Guardian advised British viewers “to take as many anti-emetics as medically advisable, then assume the crash position” prior to pressing play.

“Meghan, as ever, tries way too hard,” the Telegraph said. “The programme is quite mad and a little bit sad.”

In the show, Meghan urges people to try to make “every day” of December “special” as the year moves to an end, adding: “But don’t feel like you have to do it all.”

She recommends adding wax seals to wrapped presents to elevate them, and letting tree ornaments “find their light” as she offers up tips for the festive season.

The 56-minute one-off episode comes after the Sussexes signed their new watered-down, first-look deal with the streaming giant in August.

With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration aired on the same day the King and Queen hosted the German state visit, and just hours after the Princess of Wales published a personal letter to guests attending her annual carol concert on Friday.

Guests on the special include “a new friend”, tennis player Naomi Osaka, for whom Meghan serves her “favourite go-to” crudite platter – this time made of green vegetables – and a warmed cider.

The pair head to the craft barn to decorate cookie plates for Santa and mugs with pen and paint, where Meghan confesses she is “painfully bad” at tennis, and also at throwing and catching.

The Daily Mail branded the special as a “sad, self-indulgent, cringy wash of beige” and hit out at the duchess for striving “to be relatable”, calling her and Osaka’s interactions “thoroughly awkward”.

Meghan, who is estranged from her own father and has levelled a raft of accusations at the royals since quitting the monarchy, reveals she loves Christmas trees, advent calendars and Yuletide wreaths – with trees allowing you to “really encapsulate your family story, really feel the passage of time and the different chapters of your life through the ornaments”.

She dresses up in matching festive red pyjamas with her friends, and makes handmade personalised crackers, adding in a lavender roll-on scent for her four-year-old daughter Princess Lili, a tiny toy burger and fries for six-year-old Prince Archie, and a “little love letter” for Harry.

Meghan remarks: “Lili really likes trying to be a grown-up lady at the moment.”

She adds: “My husband’s has a little love letter, a chocolate, a little hat”, and she labels the cracker, “My Love”, rather than “Harry”.

Of Archie, she says: “Now I’m on to Archie and I’m doing burgers and he loves the colour red.”

The duchess, who spent her first royal Christmas with the late Queen and the royal family at Sandringham in Norfolk in 2017 when she was engaged to Harry, tells of learning about the “connected and sweet” tradition of crossing arms to pull Christmas crackers together.

“Living in the UK, it’s just such a part of… Christmas holidays, for sure,” she tells one of her guests, American restaurateur Will Guidara, as they prepare to craft crackers.

“It actually does feel really connected and sweet,” Meghan adds.

The two-star Guardian review said the pair “compete to out-drivel each other” as they share platitudes.

For a visit from her best friends Lindsay Jill Roth and Kelly Zajfen, Meghan wears red pyjamas, edged in white and embroidered with her name on the pocket, while she cooks and serves a festive brunch which the trio eat as they stand in the kitchen.

“This is the most insufferable section”, the Telegraph reviewer remarked, while the Times likened it to a fever dream.

“I love the tradition of a Christmas morning brunch. I do it every year with my family and I’ve already gotten a little head start – something sweet, something savoury,” the duchess says.

Archie and Lili do not appear in the episode but Harry, who featured briefly in the first season of With Love, Meghan but not the second, makes a cameo near the end.

The duke walks into the kitchen while Meghan and visiting restaurateur Tom Colicchio are cooking.

Harry also comes face to face with a dish made up of all the things he does not like.

Colicchio cooked his grandfather’s beet salad – a sentimental family dish the chef makes each Christmas Eve – made of beets, black olives, fennel, anchovies and pickled vegetables.

As Meghan lists the ingredients, having previously revealed Harry “hates all those flavours”, the duke’s eyes widen and he says: “Oh wow. That’s like the anti-salad.”

At the end of the segment, Meghan kisses Harry on the lips again and puts her arm around his neck as she tells her husband: “Thank you for coming.”

The first series of With Love, Meghan launched in March, coinciding with the unveiling of the duchess’s As Ever brand, which sells products including raspberry jam and flower sprinkles, which she repeatedly promotes throughout the show.

The festive range for sale on the asever.com website features a 43g spiced cider mulling spice kit priced at 16 dollars (£12) and a three-pack of spreads in a gift box for 42 dollars (£32).