Netflix’s ‘Harry and Meghan’ goes disastrous for Harry and Meghan

[ad_1]

Harry and Megan

Netflix

While The Crown has been a hit on Netflix for five seasons now, a new project in “Reality Royalty” hasn’t gone nearly as smoothly.

One of the projects Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Markle embarked upon after they left England and the royal family was to sign a deal with Netflix, and now one of the results of that partnership, a mini-documentary series called Harry & Meghan, has been broadcast.

While Wednesday’s megahits briefly dethroned the number one spot on Netflix, the show quickly slipped under it. The three-hour premiere was a little… rave about by critics and fans alike, and what looked like it might be a positive PR moment for Harry and Meghan may backfire as the series appears to look a lot like.. Attempt a positive PR moment.

Critics scored the show a 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, lower than most of the other series that currently make up the top ten Netflix list. It is described as “bland”, “unquestionably self-promoting” and features things that “definitely don’t add up” according to some critics.

Harry and Megan

Netflix

But the audience scores? This is where things get really bad. The show only has a 12% on Rotten Tomatoes from several thousand audience ratings, which is one of the lowest scores I can really remember for any series on Netflix.

Reading the comments, many of them come from defenders of the royal family who think it is “disrespectful” to release a show like this so close to the Queen’s death. Everyone else berates the couple as self-absorbed, whiny, narcissistic, etc. I even saw a death threat or two in there.

The general gist of the show is that it doesn’t offer all that much new information, but rather a straightforward retelling of old conflicts, both between Harry and Meghan and the royal family, as well as between them and the British tabloid press and the paparazzi who have it for them. Even if I’m on “their side” in all of this, the general idea is that the show here doesn’t exist, and the show’s existence feels like a very calculated PR campaign to deliver a specific narrative rather than a show that needs to exist because it’s really interesting in some way.

I suppose the drowning in angry viewers’ hatred in some ways only reinforces the narrative of persecution the couple presents on the show, but if there were two choices between making this series and not making it in the first place, it seems like they might have made the wrong invitation, and that only makes things worse.

Update (12/14): Well, some positive news for Harry and Meghan, the show appears to be Netflix’s first ever documentary in terms of viewership. Netflix said the show had 81.55 million hours watched after its Thursday debut. More than 28 million households have watched at least part of the series, it seems, and remember that this is only the first part. There are three more episodes arriving on Thursday, December 15th to complete the series.

WELLINGTON, NZ – OCTOBER 28: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex put on a fern… [+] A wreath is placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at the newly unveiled UK War Memorial and Bokehoe National War Memorial Park, on October 28, 2018, in Wellington, New Zealand. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are on their official 16-day fall tour, visiting cities in Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand. (Photo by Rosa Woods-Pool/Getty Images)

Getty Images

So, good news? Well, it goes to show that people are definitely interested in finding out what the series is about. The whole idea of ​​this project was to give them an audience to address their relationship and recent controversies in “their own words,” though I remember those interviews with royals in the press over the decades that either promoted or dismissed varying in how much people preferred. Seen. Having a Netflix special kind of feels like the modern day version of that.

More reviews have come in and scores have continued to drop, with critics’ reviews dropping to 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, and audience scores remaining a dismal 12% with nearly 3,500 reviews at the moment. If this is the ‘haters’ bombarding the series, as it seems, there don’t seem to be enough Harry and Meghan defenders to fight them off.

Whatever the case, if Harry and Meghan wanted a large audience to hear what they had to say, they got it. Although it remains to be seen if this will help or hurt their public image among the millions watching.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our free weekly content newsletter, God Rolls.

Pick up sci-fi novels from the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.

[ad_2]