Is Meghan’s perfect kitchen a last-chance saloon? Some are charmed by her life of domestic bliss, but Hollywood insiders must be thinking the same thing, writes AMANDA GOFF

Nothing, and I mean nothing, could turn me off watching handsome, tanned men playing polo in tight white pants.

But less than 10 minutes into Polo, the new Netflix docuseries produced by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s company Archewell Productions, I began to disassociate.

I was expecting tears, tantrums, drama, sex – a modern-day Jilly Cooper novel brought to life. It turns out my imagination had got a little carried away – but you can hardly blame me. Netflix hadn’t exactly gone above and beyond to promote the show.

Now I know why.

I won’t ruin the plot for you – there isn’t one – but you don’t even see Meghan and Prince Harry until the fifth and final episode, and that’s for less than 15 minutes.

The rest is a tedious plod through the niche world of polo, told through a group of players so unaware of their own privilege that the whole thing feels like a parody.

Netflix doesn’t typically release its streaming figures, but the less-than-stellar reviews coupled with reports Polo failed to make it into the British, American or global top 10 suggests it wasn’t exactly a hit.

Coming off the back of the Sussexes’ similarly underperforming (but critically better-received) 2023 release of Heart of Invictus, Netflix top brass may well be wondering if their rumoured $100million partnership with Archewell was money well spent.

The Sussexes’ next Netflix project is a lifestyle show hosted by Meghan and features a Who’s Who of their Hollywood friends

Harry and Meghan arrive for the 2024 Royal Salute Polo Challenge in style – if only their Netflix documentary on the sport was this stylish

In fact, the only blockbuster Harry and Meghan delivered for Netflix was, er, Harry & Meghan, a fawning documentary about their exit from the Royal Family that was tastefully released three months after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom for Montecito’s most famous family… they’ve always got The Duchess of Sussex‘s new lifestyle show to fall back on.

With Love, Meghan was announced just as I was writing this column, and at first glance it seems to be a companion piece to the ‘American Riviera Orchard’ jam-making business she’s had bubbling on the stove since March last year.

Now, I’ll withhold judgement until it’s released, but fawning celebrity interviews combined with cooking and crafting tips don’t seem like a recipe for success on a streaming platform whose biggest hits are Love is Blind, Dahmer and Squid Game.

There were the usual famous friends (Mindy Kaling makes a return after she was previously interviewed by Meghan for her Spotify podcast) and Meghan’s promises to reveal her domestic ‘tips and tricks’. Still, it all felt a bit style over substance.

I mean, what really is on offer that you don’t get from any daytime TV cooking show? Apart from the far-fetched hope she might drop some veiled dig at the royals.

Look, I don’t want to be snarky, but it’s really not looking great for the Sussexes.

LA-based royal expert Kinsey Schofield really put it best when she said in a recent interview with the London Standard: ‘A year ago, we were debating whether or not Meghan would run for office and now we’re debating when she might sell her first jar of jam. It’s such a fall from grace that it’s hard to even process.’

Mail+ columnist Amanda Goff predicts 2025 will be even worse for the Sussexes than 2024 

When they fled the royal fold in 2020 with lofty promises of becoming financially independent and making the world a better place, you would have been a fool to doubt them. They had millions of supporters – especially in the States, where they planned to make their new home – plus all the free publicity in the world for Archewell, their business-slash-charity with interests in film, TV and podcasts.

And yet here we are, having wrapped up 2024 on a whimper with only Meghan’s arts-and-crafts celebrity interview show to look forward to. It all feels very ‘last roll of the dice’, doesn’t it?

And if that isn’t bad enough, I was alarmed last week to discover the Sussexes’ most die-hard fans (the so-called ‘Sussex squad’) were sharing creepy Al images of the couple’s children, Lilibet and Archie. I didn’t understand it at first, then it occurred to me they had most likely resorted to AI because they weren’t satisfied by the family’s increasingly rare personal updates. By scorning the Royal Rota that for decades had provided the press with a steady stream of family photos, the private-when-it-suits-them Sussexes have inadvertently encouraged the most unsettling kind of fandom.

So, in summary, by giving the public what they don’t want (dull Polo documentaries) and refusing to share enough of what they do want (nice family photos, like the ones Kate takes), the Californians made a right royal mess of 2024.

And I hate to break it to them, but I don’t think 2025 is going to be much better.

It’s no secret that Hollywood is fickle and the applause only lasts as long as the audience is entertained. And for Meghan and Harry, the crowd stopped clapping a long time ago. The Sussexes were once embraced as exciting new stars, fresh talent, but their story is getting stale now. And that’s before we talk about their lack of talent.

The $100million Netflix deal was once their crown jewel, signalling Hollywood’s commitment to their story of how they fled the mean British royals for the warm embrace of the U.S. But now, with poorly received projects like Polo, Heart of Invictus and Live to Lead (remember that?), the cracks in their star power are showing.

In Hollywood, you’re only as big as your last hit, and they haven’t had one in a while. As I watched the trailer for With Love, Meghan, I couldn’t help but imagine that she must have been thinking: if this doesn’t work, we’re screwed.

Could it be the American public has worked out that apart from slagging off their family, they don’t have much left to say? Perhaps they thought keeping their titles would be enough to keep them relevant – but that’s the thing about Americans, they rejected the British royals once before, and they’ll happily do it again.

The irony, of course, is the Sussexes turned their backs on the monarchy, an institution based around tradition, to become celebrities in Hollywood, where all that matters is what’s new and shiny.

If you can’t keep up in Hollywood, you are disposed of. The Royal Family, on the other hand, looks after its own, so long as they play by the rules.

But no, Harry and Meghan insisted they had to leave the royal fold (while keeping their titles, naturally) so they could launch their own brand, one that bridges the gap between Buckingham Palace and La La Land. But what is that brand today, more than four years after Megxit? Honestly, I don’t think even they know.

If 2025 doesn’t go their way, we could even see them return to the UK with their tails between their legs, writes Amanda

Unlike Meghan, Harry doesn’t have a profession to fall back on. His entire upbringing was about duty and service, and his post-royal career hinges on his personal brand. As Hollywood begins to tire of him, his options shrink and without new angles to sell, his ability to generate income or keep the public interested, is in peril.

And with President-elect Donald Trump making no secret of the fact he is ‘not a fan’ of Meghan and found the Sussexes to be ‘very disrespectful to the Queen’, their time as American residents could well be running out.

Let’s not forget Harry admitted in his memoir Spare to past drug use, including cocaine, marijuana and magic mushrooms, and Trump warned ‘appropriate action’ would be taken if he were found to have lied on his visa forms.

When Harry and Megs first set foot in Montecito, I predicted the American fairytale wouldn’t last. Now, with the Hollywood spell wearing off and a potentially hostile White House, I foresee 2025 could be even bleaker than the year they just had. 

If the leader of the free world has his way, it could even see them return to the UK with their tails between their legs.

What a sight that would be.