Meghan Markle: With Love, Meghan - Netflix show, and how critics have reacted to Meghan’s cooking show

Can With Love, Meghan really be as bad as we are being led to believe? Or is there something else at play, particularly from the British media, that is motivating such spite-filled criticism? Here are some snippets from reviews online:

The Times: Carol Midgley - “If you thought With Love, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s new lifestyle show, would be a smug, syrupy endurance watch, and that you would rather fry your eyeballs than sit through it, I have news for you. It is so much worse than that.”

She goes on to describe Ms Markle as ‘squawking’ as she hurtles towards a two-star review. Then there’s Mail Online. Oooof, she’s upset those guys. Article after article. Hatchet job after hatchet job. Here are some of just the headlines:

• Duchess of desperation: critics’ withering reviews of Meghan Markle’s Netflix show as they mock ‘gormless lifestyle filler’ that shows her ‘joylessly filling party bags with seeds’
• Working mums’ backlash at Meghan Markle’s Netflix show: Parents condemn duchess’ ‘unrelatable’ cookery tips for busy families as she’s ridiculed for kids party bags with gardening tools, peas and seeds
• Meghan Markle ends her Netflix cookery show with apparent jab at the Royal Family as it finally goes live in make or break moment for Duchess
• With Love slammed as ‘cure for insomniacs’ as viewers deliver scathing verdict
• Look away Italians! Meghan reveals bizarre method of making past dish - and refers to spaghetti as ‘noodles’
• Haven’t we seen this somewhere before? Viewers highlight similarities between Meghan’s recipes and scenes to other shows as her new cookery show airs
• Don’t call me Markle: Meghan insists her surname is now ‘Sussex’ as she corrects celebrity friend The Office star Mindy Kaling in new Netflix cookery show

That isn’t all of them, either. It goes on and on and on, like a drunken ex messaging the woman who ditched him six months prior. But look elsewhere and they keep on coming. The Guardian: Kiss the Netflix deal goodbye! With Love, Meghan is so pointless it might be the Sussexes last TV show. The Irish Times: With Love, Meghan: so beige and bland it doesn’t even qualify as a hate-watch. The Telegraph: This hostess with the mostest act must be exhausting.

When she returned home from work, I said to my wife: “Oh, god. Have you seen the reviews for Meghan’s new cooking show?” She screeched: “God, yeah. People love to hate her, don’t they? We are definitely going to have to watch it, if only to see what all the hate is about.”

And that’s the thing, isn’t it. It won’t be their last TV show and I strongly suspect it is a very inoffensive, bright, happy watch that makes me no more roll my eyes at the pretentiousness of it all than when Nigella Lawson pronounced microwave ‘meeecrowarvay!’

Anyway, I’m off to hide the TV remotes.

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