While The Crown has been a mega hit for Netflix over five seasons now, a new adventure in “Reality Royalty” hasn’t gone so well.

One project Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan Markle took on after they left England and the Royal Family was to sign a deal with Netflix, and now one of the results of that partnership, a short documentary series called Harry & Meghan, has now aired.

While briefly dethroning megahit Wednesday for the top spot on Netflix, the show quickly fell back below. And the three-hour premiere was a bit… roasted by critics and fans alike, and what seemed like a positive PR moment for Harry and Meghan looks like it may have backfired, as the show looks a lot look like… an attempt at positive Instant RP.

Reviews scored the show at 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, below most of the other series that currently make up Netflix’s Top 10 list. It is described as “bland”, “unquestioned self-promotion” and features things “that definitely don’t fit” according to some of the critics.

But the public scores? This is where things get really nasty. The show only has 12% on Rotten Tomatoes over several thousand viewership reviews, one of the lowest scores I can remember seeing for really any series on Netflix.

Reading the reviews, much of it comes from defenders of the Royal Family who think it’s “disrespectful” to release a show like this so close to the Queen’s death. Everyone castigates the couple as being indulgent, moaning, narcissistic, etc. I even saw a death threat or two in there.

The gist of the show is that it doesn’t feature so much new information, but is a direct account of old conflicts, between Harry and Meghan and the royal family, as well as between them and the British tabloid press. and the paparazzi who have it for them. While you may be on their “side” in all of this, the general view is that the presentation here is lacking, and the show’s existence feels like a very calculated PR campaign to present a specific narrative. rather than a show that had to exist because it’s really interesting in a way.

I guess drowning in hate from angry viewers in some ways only reinforces the narrative of persecution presented by the couple on the show, but if there were two choices between doing and not doing this show in the first place , it looks like maybe they made the wrong call, and that only makes things worse.

Update (12/14): Well, some positive news for Harry and Meghan, the show is apparently Netflix’s biggest documentary debut in terms of viewership. The show logged 81.55 million viewing hours after its debut on Thursday, Netflix said. Over 28 million households have watched at least part of the series, apparently, and keep in mind that this is only the first part. Three more episodes arrive on Thursday, December 15, rounding out the series.

So, good news? Well, that shows that people are definitely interested in seeing what the show is about. The whole idea of ​​this project was to give them an audience to address ‘in their own words’ their relationship and recent controversies, although it reminds me of those royal family press interviews over the decades that have had varying increases or decreases in how supportive people were. viewed them. Getting your own kind of special Netflix feels like the modern version of that.

More and more reviews have come in and the scores keep dropping, with reviews down to 45% on Rotten Tomatoes, and viewership scores remaining at 12% with nearly 3,500 reviews currently. If it’s “haters” bombarding the show, as there seems to be, there doesn’t seem to be enough of Harry and Meghan’s defenders to fight them.

Either way, if Harry and Meghan wanted a wide audience to hear what they had to say, they got it. Although it remains to be seen whether this will help or hurt their public image among the millions watching.

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