‘I love the idea of spending time together and finding new ways to show people you care,” says Meghan in the opening seconds of the trailer for arguably the most eagerly awaited second series in Netflix history.
You know that tone, you know those caring, sharing homemaking vibes with just a little shard of steel and a few notes of don’t interrupt me and please call me Sussex. Yes. She is back, or very nearly back. With Love, Meghan, series two, is released on August 26 and if you can’t wait until then (it does suddenly seem an unbearably long time), you can just watch the trailer over and over because that’s the With Love, Meghan effect. You sort of cannot resist it.
When she says on the voiceover, “Let’s get creative and learn something new,” you know it’s going to be how to arrange slices of fresh fruit in rainbow arcs on a plate, or how to fill a bag with lavender and then tie it with a hand-written label, or maybe it’ll be tying party balloons to an arch — neither creative or new but hey! Meghan’s talking.
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Meghan’s reinventing the wheel and we are very much along for the ride because there is nothing quite like it. It’s like a spoof of a lifestyle show with exceedingly high production values (it looks like a Nancy Meyers movie on steroids), some celebrity faces and lots and lots of cringe-making moments.
It’s got everything you want from a quality hate watch: seriously basic cooking and people standing around sipping from cups (mint tea made from mint, from the garden?) while murmuring, “This is so comforting.”
It has terrible basic “crafting” or, in Meghan world, “easy ways to show up lovingly”, which probably means tying a bow on a box you bought in Bergdorf’s filled with parmesan you grated. It has Meghan’s weird demure lady wardrobe, which she’s marketing.
Meghan charmingly defers to the expert — while clearly hating that she’s not the expert
NETFLIX
And it has celebrity cameos from celebrities who are required simply to ooze adoration and admiration for their hostess Meghan and say things like “I could do this every day” (Chrissy Teigen). No one knows why they do it but the amount of bowing and scraping required is off the scale and makes for terrific viewing.
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Best of all, it has Meghan trying to be charming and let someone else be the expert while very much struggling to admit she’s learning something for the first time from an expert. Absolutely hates that and that’s very fun to watch.
Last but not least it has the car-crash horror of witnessing poor Harry (kind of poor, in a way) be relegated from the guy who, we learnt in series one, makes a really good scrambled egg for breakfast to the unsophisticated loser with basic tastes.
Towards the end of the trailer Meghan makes a confession (there’s probably an obligatory one or two per series) about Harry’s preferences: “You know who doesn’t like lobster? My husband,” she says and in response, chef Andres says, “And you marry him?” Ha ha.
Because we all need reminding who is the prize in this marriage and who is raising up who and teaching taste and style and love and care and balance and some other stuff. Harry is nowhere to be seen of course … He may appear, face pressed to the window, juggling, in episode three while she makes a tomato sauce with real tomatoes. If we’re lucky.