“There are easy ways to show up lovingly,” Meghan Sussex, nee Markle, says during the second season of her Netflix lifestyle show, With Love, Meghan. In fact, the word “easy” seems to be the watchword for the entire eight-episode run – and boy, is it doing some heavy lifting.
Making homemade graham cracker s’mores with vanilla-bean turmeric marshmallows and here’s-one-I-made-earlier tonal chocolate bark is, apparently, “easy”. Whipping up boba tea and persimmon-topped sourdough is “easy”. Crafting necklaces using pressed flowers for your children’s individual birth months and setting them in UV resin is “easy”. In the surreal and saccharine world created by the actor turned royal turned Instagram-grid-come-to-life, nothing, it seems, is complicated.
This second outing of the madly aspirational hostessing show doesn’t stray far from the format of its predecessor. Each instalment sees an impeccably if blandly presented Meghan swaddled in neutral tones as she invites guests round to a house in Montecito, California. It’s not her house, obviously, but a rental property down the street, which makes the whole “at home with” brand feel slightly bogus. References to spouse Prince Harry and their two children, Archie and Lilibet, are generally kept sporadic and vague – “I would’ve told H to come!” she trills to an awkward John Legend, who, one assumes, is contractually obliged to duck into the kitchen when dropping off wife Chrissy Teigen.
Her visitors range from good friends, like repeat guest Daniel Martin, her makeup artist, to people she’s never met, such as Queer Eye’s Tan France or celebrity chef David Chang. Each episode sees Meghan throw together an OTT snack and drink for her guests’ arrival before forcing them to participate in a mandatory making-and-baking activity (painting children’s aprons using limes as stamps feels particularly unhinged). Oh, and just to ensure no one goes away empty-handed, she presents an aggressively thoughtful handmade gift to each person who crosses the threshold: homemade rosewater, say, or a silk scarf with a water marbling effect.
Here, aesthetic is everything. Edible flowers are sprinkled with alarming abandon, ribbons are tied in perfect bows around colour-matched presents, and even when the bright, airy kitchen is being used to marinade steaks and pummel flatbread, it somehow never gets truly messy – the work, one must presume, of the 80-strong crew who work tirelessly to curate the “effortless” vibe. It’s like an AI was fed every Nancy Meyers film ever made and instructed to burp out a TV series.
I can just about see the appeal of a show that sells pure escapism at a time when the world feels increasingly uncertain and hostile. The stakes in With Love… are so low as to be non-existent. “Drama” comes courtesy of attempting to weigh out exactly 113g of water for a sourdough starter; “I don’t like the pressure!” squeals Meghan when Chang says he’s excited about trying her vinaigrette. But there is no pressure. Nothing can or will ever go wrong in this cossetted, fictional slice of California lifestyle.
Netflix must be fairly confident, too, given that the streamer announced earlier this month the extension of a “multi-year, first-look deal” for future films and TV shows with Harry and Meghan’s Archewell production company. This, despite With Love…’s viewing figures hitting a paltry 5.3 million for the first season, meaning it didn’t even rank in the streamer’s top 300 shows for the first half of 2025.
But the main takeaway word for the casual viewer is “inadequate”. For how else are the rest of us supposed to feel when gaslit by a multimillionaire insisting that constructing homemade necklaces or flower arrangements is a cinch – a statement she’s making from the comfort of her “craft barn”? When she lectures us while grilling French toast that “it’s not as complicated as most people think it is” to make a hot breakfast for your partner and kids every morning?
I’m merely a working woman, not even a working parent, and I can still feel the burgeoning tendrils of shame blossoming when I consider my own morning “ritual” of chucking cereal into a bowl. And yet the show’s purpose doesn’t seem to be to demonstrate how one might pull off these ridiculous feats. Recipes are only half explained; specifics of paints and craft materials aren’t actually shared. It’s as if they already know that no one in their right mind is going to attempt this stuff.
In which case, it’s a show that needs to be carried by the “talent”, kept afloat by so much warmth, wit and charm that it resembles “a hug in a mug”, as Meghan describes one of her homemade beverages. Unfortunately, she is not the woman to deliver such a thing, plumping instead for cloying sentimentality and flavourless wholesomeness.
“It brings me so much joy to see everyone just having fun and trying so many cool new things,” Meghan says earnestly at the end of episode one, as she toasts marshmallows over the bonfire with her new friends. Excuse me while I book an emergency dentist appointment – the whole thing’s as sickly sweet as a vanilla-bean and turmeric s’more…
