{"id":213775,"date":"2025-12-03T20:16:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T20:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/213775\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T20:16:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T20:16:23","slug":"the-reek-of-forced-fun-is-ever-present-even-harry-looks-embarrassed-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/213775\/","title":{"rendered":"The reek of forced fun is ever-present, even Harry looks embarrassed \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A jolly red-faced man looms into view towards the end of Meghan Markle\u2019s<\/a> latest Netflix<\/a> turkey, With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration. It\u2019s Prince Harry<\/a>, apparently ruddy with embarrassment over being dragged into his wife\u2019s tectonically tacky lifestyle show. <\/p>\n

Harry \u2013 kept locked away through the previous two seasons of With Love \u2013 has popped in to jollily admonish Meghan\u2019s high-concept salad (all that beetroot and anchovy) and to sing the praises of her mother\u2019s gumbo. His own family\u2019s Christmas cooking is not mentioned. Still, we can surmise that the late Queen Elizabeth<\/a> was not au fait with the cacio e pepe pasta or goug\u00e8res (upwardly mobile cheese puffs) that Meghan has rustled up with the desperate bustle of a Victorian urchin working in a match factory. <\/p>\n

Royals are often assumed to be lazy. But Meghan \u2013 a blue-blood through marriage \u2013 is manically eager to make an impression throughout her latest attempt at rebranding herself as Darina Allen<\/a> for people who watch too much of The Crown<\/a>. Clocking in at an ominous 56 minutes, Meghan\u2019s Holiday Celebration begins with our hostess skipping among the pines at a Christmas tree farm and busying herself with making an advent calendar stuffed with positive aphorisms for her kids. <\/p>\n

She then welcomes her first \u201cfriend\u201d \u2013 b-listers from the American lifestyle industry prepared to trade banter with Meghan in return for an elevated profile. That guest is restaurateur Will Guider, who is astonished to discover the Ye Olde World tradition of Christmas crackers. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a celebration of community,\u201d he gasps as Meghan explains that a cracker will typically include a terrible joke (she disgracefully neglects to mention the paper crowns). Next is the famously introverted tennis pro Naomi Osaka. She is visibly puzzled as to what she is doing in the Meghan-verse and takes some of the air out of proceedings by explaining to her hostess that, as a new mother, she doesn\u2019t have much time for entertaining. <\/p>\n

There is an unpleasant bauble lurking at the bottom of Holiday Celebration insofar as it marks the end of the most lucrative phase of the Sussex\u2019s relationship with Netflix. Having stumped up $100 million for five years of content from the exiled royals, Netflix has now decided to amend the arrangement. Going forward, it will be a \u201cfirst look\u201d deal, meaning less upfront cash and the option for Netflix to say thanks but no thanks to whatever Meghan and Harry cook up next. <\/p>\n

But before they head off into the streaming sunset, this one final horror remains. It is an onslaught of Christmas naffness \u2013 the awfulness of which seems obvious to everyone except poor Meghan. Confronted with his wife\u2019s purgatorial salad, for instance, Harry\u2019s good cheer evaporates faster than his uncle Andrew\u2019s sweat in a London nightclub. <\/p>\n

The vitriol directed at Meghan since she and Harry became a couple has been unedifying and she is clearly not going through the motions here. Far from it \u2013 she wants very badly for Holiday Celebration to dazzle. But like an office party where HR mandates that everyone participate in the karaoke, the reek of forced fun is ever-present. It\u2019s almost enough to overpower even the anchovies that are giving Harry the horrors. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A jolly red-faced man looms into view towards the end of Meghan Markle\u2019s latest Netflix turkey, With Love,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[16838,18,117,19,17,5091,127,5092],"class_list":{"0":"post-213775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-christmas","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-meghan-markle","14":"tag-netflix","15":"tag-prince-harry"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115657479904867048","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}