Harry and Meghan review: comprehensive Netflix documentary lets the Sussexes articulate their own story

Harry & Meghan is an attempt to paint a definitive portrait of the relationship between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – or, at least, and more importantly, their definitive portrait of their own relationship. It opens by contextualising the media coverage they’ve received thus far, emphasising their own total absence from a narrative that surrounds them and depends on them – the new Netflix documentary is their own contribution, an attempt to push back against the dominant voices in the conversation. As Markle explains, why wouldn’t they get to tell their own story?

The result is quite an exhaustive and comprehensive documentary series, long on backstory and detail. The three episodes that became available today chart the early years of their relationship, from when they first met to their public introduction to the world to their eventual engagement and wedding; it stops short of any of the more recent notable royal events. (Interviews for the documentary concluded in August 2022, a month before the Queen died.) Part of this is Netflix working to get two events out of a six-part series; part of this, though, is a real and clear desire for completionism on their part.

So, it’s mostly history, mostly context, going over the groundwork and giving the couple an opportunity to articulate things that are already public knowledge in their own words for the first time. There’s relatively little that close followers of the story won’t know already, albeit expressed on someone else’s terms, and there’s little that’s meant to function as Huge Bombshell Revelations or Watershed Moments. It’s personal testimonial, personal perspective – a throughline repeated often, the main takeaway for the documentary. (See, for example, Markle’s account of their first meeting – she didn’t google him afterwards, to see how other people spoke about him, but looked at his social media to see how he portrayed himself.)

It’s valuable though, clearly. If nothing else, there’s something quite precise and clarifying about seeing them articulate what they’re going through in their own words – it cuts through the absurdity of self-styled Royal Correspondents, it exposes the material harm done and the real danger created by the racist tabloid press, it emphasises the lack of any real knowledge held by the people who position themselves as experts on the Sussexes. (All of whom who are now, of course, falling over themselves to drum up stories about this documentary.) Alongside the personal testimony from the Sussexes, the documentary includes commentary from genuine experts like Afua Hirsch and David Olusoga, offering context about the history of the royal family and its roots in empire – which, again, has an obvious value.

One of the more striking moments of the documentary doesn’t involve the title couple at all. It’s a bit of archive footage of the-then Prince Charles, speaking in the 1980s about his own experience with the media. “Cameras poking at you from every quarter, recording every twitch,” describes Charles of the press attention he’s received, before concluding “if you don’t try to work out in your own mind some kind of method for existing and surviving this kind of thing, you would go mad I think.”

It’s eerie how it prefigures his own son’s experience with the media – how little has changed, how much has got worse – but it feels as well like it emphasises just how vociferous the response has been in the face of the Markles trying to find their own method to exist and survive. If this documentary is a step towards that, well, then, good for them.

The first three episodes of Harry & Meghan are available on Netflix now, with another three episodes scheduled to be released next week. I watched all three of the currently available episodes before (and while) watching this review.