'Pretzel cigarette anyone?'

Meghan Markle, dying dogs & Sonic The Hedgehog

When it comes to the Real Housewives franchises my policy is any time, any franchise, anywhere*. Watching Real Housewives episodes is medicinal and observing a woman called Tamra argue with a woman called Vicki (FOR 19 YEARS) is healing. The Real Housewives are my brain cigarettes which I save up all week and then chain smoke every weekend. They are the entertainment equivalent of lying on my arm and having it go numb and I would not be parted from them.

So when it was announced back in January that Meghan Markle Sussex would be releasing a new cooking and lifestyle show, I was giddy because I love watching rich people in scripted reality formats doing basic things. I hoped for Martha Stewart levels of elevated domesticity crossed with the energy of a Nancy Meyers banger. I wanted to see Meghan waft about her Montecito estate draped in Loro Piana and french linen. I wanted to watch the southern Californian light hit the gold bezel of her Cartier tank as she placed an antique fish knife on an artfully set table. And I wanted and expected the whole thing to be completely tone deaf. If this Archewell production wasn’t utterly unrelatable and removed from reality, I would demand my (brother’s) Netflix subscription to be refunded stat. Anyone online giving out about the one percentness of it all is missing the point. Expecting relatability from a woman called Meghan, Duchess of Sussex who in the year 2025 is married to a man called Prince Harry is like watching a Sonic the Hedgehog film and saying ‘Eh, no hedgehog could actually run that fast in real life’. Of course not bish - he’s Sonic the Hedgehog! Running at supersonic speeds is his main thing. If you want to see an animal run slowly watch a YouTube video of a sloth trying to cross a road. I would have been disappointed if they’d given us Meghan in the middle of Lidl, picking up a tin of Kenco Millicano and exclaiming ‘€10.70?!’ I wanted deluded, monied, gloss and that is what I got.

Against a soundtrack of songs that wouldn’t have been out of place in an Eddie Rocket’s jukebox, I clocked Meghan’s subtly expensive cashmere tops, the diamond pinky ring and the Juste Un Clou bangle which is the 1%-ers version of a Pandora bracelet. Her skin was luminous, her blow-dries were perfect and her dog seemingly near death. It ticked all my Nancy Meyers aesthetic boxes but at the same time, the episodes were amongst the most chair-slidingly boring minutes of television I had ever watched. The episodes were so boring that I thought about stapling my hand to my thigh just to feel something, which coming from me, is saying something.