TV review It feels like a spoof: Prince Harry's show on the super-rich's stupidest sport
The Guardian|December 11, 2024
Back in 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan signed a $100m deal with Netflix to produce - as they put it - "content that informs but also gives hope" utilising "powerful storytelling" through a "truthful and relatable lens". What this meant in practice was that they made one reality show about how hard they had it, and then they stuttered.
Stuart Heritage
TV review It feels like a spoof: Prince Harry's show on the super-rich's stupidest sport

The Harry & Meghan show was followed by two forgettable documentaries, one about the Invictus Games and one about some nebulous concept of leadership. At some point in the future there will be a Meghan cookery show that Netflix seems reluctant to actually show. But before that comes Polo, a show about polo made by Prince Harry, who likes polo.

Having watched the first season, I'm fairly certain that the plan here was to slot Polo into Netflix's surprisingly excellent slate of sport documentaries. The goal was to do for polo what Last Chance U did for American football, or what Disney+'s Welcome to Wrexham did for lower league football. You can already see the problem with this approach, can't you?

Those shows were underdog stories. Last Chance U revolved around talented young men with no safety net. Owing to problems either societal or behavioural, they had blown every shot they were given, and football represented their last hope of fulfilling their dreams. Same with the Wrexham show, which is about a neglected community finding a sense of purpose through sport.

This story is from the December 11, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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This story is from the December 11, 2024 edition of The Guardian.

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