o you know your chukkas from your martingales? No?
Clearly you never spent your precious teenage years obsessively reading Jilly Cooper’s Polo and nor, I’m guessing, are you about to spend five hours lost in the high stakes, high bucks and abnormally high and taut foreheaded world of the horsey sport.
Over the weeknd the trailer for Polo, the latest Netflix show from Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, landed, a title that only took, I’m guessing, four focus groups, extended deliberations and one meeting where someone threw a cup full of cold brew at a wall. (And they say Hollywood has run out of new ideas…)
Sadly for anyone holding Netflix stock and the only two Montecitan ratepayers with titles, Polo has already been subjected to a bit of a pasting.
The reaction to the trailer has been frostier than skinny dipping at McMurdo. At the time of writing, on YouTube, the trailer had been liked just shy of 1000 times — and disliked 12,000 times.
The first look at Harry and Meghan’s new documentary, Polo, on Netflix.
The trailer dropped over the weekend.
Meanwhile, back in the UK, former friends and polo cronies of Harry’s have been energetically dumping on the project, calling it “tacky and cringey” with one saying they had watched the three-minute teaser “in appalled hysterics”.
The crux of the matter: Polo appears not to be a smart look at wealth, privilege and the morality of an animal sport. This show instead looks like Harry and Megan doing their absolute level best to create a Real Housewives-ish diffusion line but with more hay.
Polo looks like it has all the gravitas and intellectual fibre of home brand vanilla wafer.
Parlez vous cashing in?
You also have to wonder how Polo gels with the wider Sussex project of earnest caring about melting ice caps and empowering men to hug more given it seems to be a nose-up-against-the-glass look at a gauche world of filler-ed women busy living full and meaningful lives standing around on the sidelines and posturing men busy comparing the size of their net worths.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on their wedding day. Picture: Netflix
This new series marks a real departure for the Sussexes. Their last series, Heart of Invictus, was made by Oscar-winning producer Joanna Natasegara and included devastating footage from the frontline in Ukraine; now the Sussexes are putting out a series celebrating one percenters who can afford to blow vast sums of money on a sport that involves riding horses at one another.
Who needs Elysian fields when you can have manicured Floridian ones dotted with paid up Mar-a-lago members and Argentinian beefcake shipped in special?
But, I hear you say, the punters might just hoover this glamorous fare up because TV doesn’t need to be all morality takes and improving viewing.
Consider, though, the broader context and what sort of reception it might get when the show actually lands on December 10.
One of the things that has become clear in the fall-out from the re-election of convicted fraudster Donald Trump to the presidency is the degree to which Americans are feeling the pinch. How will Polo play at a time when Americans – if not the world – are gripped by a cost-of-living crisis and increasingly being unable to afford basic groceries?
It’s not even like the show can rely on the lure of real life royalty given that Harry and Meghan don’t actually appear on screen except for in occasional background shots.
There is also the not-so-minor issue that Polo puts them at risk of being on the wrong side of history in terms of animal cruelty.
The couple have based themselves in the US full time.
Back in the UK, Harry’s old polo chums have been trying to pick themselves up off the floor as they roll around in dog hair and laughter.
One former friend, who played the sport with Harry back in Blighty as a teen, has told The Daily Beast: “It’s hilarious, but not in a good way. It’s so tacky and cringey, it is literally all the worst things about polo. I watched it in appalled hysterics.”
Another former friend told the Beast’s Tom Sykes: “The irony is that polo is actually a surprisingly inclusive sport these days. You do see plenty of rich kids but there are also plenty of kids from less rarefied backgrounds who just happen to be fantastic riders who are sponsored by the teams. It doesn’t look like this show is going to foreground that, which is a real missed opportunity.”
Nor does Hollywood seem that wowed by the new series with a senior industry executive who has told Sykes somewhat politely, “This looks like it has failed to capture the imagination.”
You don’t say. To wit: 12,000 thumbs downs.
There are now only about ten months until Harry and Meghan hit the five year mark of their Netflix contract, around about when it will reportedly run out and the locking is tich down. Their reported $USD100 million value deal with the streamer is by far and away their most fattest money spinner and Polo could be one of their final opportunities to try and keep Netflix on side.
Stills of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Frogmore cottage. Picture: Netflix
Next year the Duchess of Sussex’s already-shot entertaining show will debut too and the pressure must only be growing to notch up a couple of bang up hits.
“There is very little tolerance for pissing money away these days,” that Hollywood exec told the Beast. “It’s debatable whether anyone cares about these two if they are not serving up outrageous stories about the royals. They are running out of last chances to prove that isn’t so. If they can’t, they could try to monetise their fame on social media. Plenty of people would still give Harry a million bucks for a post.”
If that ever came to pass — a prince being paid to post — then the Sussexes will really have hit their Real Housewives years. What a Real bummer that would be.
