With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration review – take anti-nausea pills, she’s back!

In the top corner of the screen as With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration opens is its age rating: “U – no material likely to offend or harm.” This may be true in the traditional sense. But I would advise any viewers who are British, not in the acting profession and/or not married to the Duchess of Sussex to take as many anti-emetics as medically advisable, then assume the crash position.

We open with Meghan literally skipping through a Christmas tree farm. “Once a year you get to do the tree thing!” She then decorates it, which she loves because it allows you to “encapsulate your family’s story!”. She likes to position the baubles “so they find their light”. Once she has done that, it’s time to fill a 24-pocketed Advent calendar with – no, not chocolates, you fat English pleb, but “small gestures” and “little findings” for your children. “I’m writing notes that say ‘I love you because you are so kind!’ and ‘I love you because you are so brave!’” Do the children leave notes in return, I wonder? “Should we give up hope of the occasional Freddo here?” “Morning trans fats are the tradition to start, Mother.”

“Small moments create the energy you want for the holidays,” and you can achieve them by hand-painting cookies. Many things are “elevated” – gift-wrapping with wax seals foremost among them, though I think attaching them with a hot glue gun is … not? Many more things are “darling” or “absolutely darling”, and this I find difficult.

Meghan has the usual array of guests; one who meets her on her own turf, some billed as friends, and a couple of celebrities she has been worshipping since she was born or whatever. I cannot be expected to listen to everything.

Anyway. The one to meet her on the same emetic turf is restaurateur Will Guidara. She makes him cacio e pepe gougères and “reindeer chow” to take home to his wife, who, Meghan informs us, “loves sweet, nostalgic treats”. I hope she likes them when they look like actual animal droppings, because that’s what she’s getting.

She and Will make crackers and compete to out-drivel each other. The holidays are all about “connecting”, says Meghan. He sees this and raises her by not remembering what he’s eaten at the best dinner parties but “remembering that I left with my heart feeling full”. A few feeble jabs from Meghan, then he delivers the knockout blow: “What’s really going to attach it,” he says as she sticks one of the damn crackers together, “is the love we feel for the person we’re making it for.” Oh sir. Well played.

The friends are Lindsay and Kelly. The three of them have known each other for years. Photographs of them as teenagers and twentysomethings are shown as proof. They eat a cinnamon pastry star, quiche cups and baked pears, drink “bubbles” with pomegranate syrup and make Christmas wreaths. “I’m curious to see how they all look different!” says Meghan, which is such an odd thing to say that I have not stopped thinking about it since.

Naomi Osaka, the tennis player and Meghan’s first celebrity, is like a cool plunge bath after an overheated sauna. I’ve never seen anyone more desperate to get home. She spends most of the holidays not relaxing but “chasing after my daughter”. “But that is so soul-filling,” says Meghan, squeezing her eyes shut. Naomi looks at her in polite bemusement. She paints a plate very badly and leaves. I pledge undying allegiance to her.

Second celebrity up is Top Chef’s top chef Tom Colicchio, but who cares because as he makes his family’s traditional festive beet, olive, fennel, pickles and anchovy salad and salted cod, who should turn up but H! Or, as we used to know him, Prince Harry. Balder than ever but still charmingly at ease and blessedly calm. He hates beets, olives, fennel, pickles, anchovies and fish, which almost makes you proud to be British. So it’s just as well Meghan has made her mum’s chicken gumbo too, although it’s so spicy it makes him sweat. Come home, Harry. Just come home.

And that, mercifully, is the end. I feel both offended and harmed, but in the spirit of goodwill I will add a star to my rating in gratitude for the fact that at least we are safe now until next year. God bless us, every one.

[Source: The Guardian]