With Love, Meghan review: Meghan Markle’s new ‘domestic goddess’ cooking show drops on Netflix

Let the Martha Stewartification begin! Meghan Markle’s new lifestyle series, With love, Meghan, has finally launched on Netflix — and it’s a delight.

Will viewers feel equally charmed? It’s hard to tell: there will be plenty who will gleefully hate-watch this — but an eyeball’s an eyeball, and Netflix won’t mind either way.

For my part: I was charmed. In fact, with the world going to hell in a hand basket right now, this inoffensive, soft-focus piece of fluff might just be what we all need to be engaging with right now.

It’s glorious escapism — and I am eating it up.

In the first episode, which was not filmed at the Duchess’s home but at a nearby property owned by a friend, Markle, who now goes by the name Meghan Sussex, is seen preparing to welcome her good friend, make-up artist Daniel Martin, to her home.

“Whenever I have someone come and stay, one of my favourite things to do is to prep the guest room,” she tells the camera, before whipping up a selection of welcome treats for her close pal.

She’s seen making custom-made Epsom salts and a little teabag full of lavender for his bath.

“The joy of hostessing for me, is surprising people with moments that let them know I was really thinking of their whole experience from morning to evening,” says Markle as she joyfully arranges a welcome tray for her guest.

Later in the episode she’s filmed preparing snacks, making beeswax candles (with honey from her hives), popping corn, baking a lemon and honey cake and preparing a delicious looking single skillet spaghetti dish — all while dressed in an impeccable crisp, white shirt.

Yep, it’s fair to say that there are moments in this first episode that seem laughably implausible. Making spaghetti in a white shirt with baggy sleeves and no apron? Hat’s off to you, Meg!

But it’s all so wholesome, Markle is genuinely engaging as host, and the artifice we were all dreading is nowhere to be seen.

Well, either that, or Markle is a really, really good actress.

“I feel like this is all fake,” says Daniel, as he sits in the backyard of the palatial home, sipping tea and eating cake with his friend at the end of the first episode.

“This is not a backdrop; this is not a green screen,” says Markle, surveying her surroundings.

And honestly: I want to believe.

I want to believe that this version of Markle is genuine; that she really is the domestic goddess she’s fashioning herself to be in this series. That she really does live a soft-focus life, tip-toeing through her flower fields, harvesting honey with her beekeeper friend Branden; that somewhere out there in California she’s finally getting the fairytale happy ending she deserves.

The series, which has been in the works for some time, is already being met with approval online, with viewers praising its plethora of easily-achievable, budget-friendly lifestyle hacks.

Markle might be a Duchess, but she’s a Duchess who was once a struggling aspiring actress, and there’s a sense she’s not above mucking in and making an easy weeknight dinner for the fam. Sure, she’s doing it from her multi-million dollar Montecito mansion (which, sadly, is not seen in the series), and she’s seemingly doing it while wearing an assortment of crisp white attire, but she’s doing it nonetheless — and for that she must be applauded.

Will I be watching more? You bet. Will I be trying some of her recipes, and attempting some of her easy lifestyle tips and tricks? Yeah, that too. Because much as I wanted to hate this piece of self-serving television, I actually adored it.

Haters gunna hate, but Markle’s gunna make: and I’ll be there eating it all up.

One slice of lemon and honey cake at a time.

3.5 stars.