Dirty, sweaty boys. Riding.’ One can only imagine this was the pitch when Harry and Meghan rocked up at Netflix HQ for one last stab at a commercial hit.
Well, it did the trick! Netflix has released a trailer for the couple’s much-anticipated five-part series about the wholly unrelatable sport of polo, which will ‘heir’ on December 10.
Execs were doubtless assured there would be no scratchy tweed, no chilly salmon rivers, no battered Land Rovers and no wonky teeth.
There wouldn’t even be any interviews on sofas about past slights, no homey herding of rescued hens, no wheeling out of a tot or beagle a la the couple’s one-and-only hit since striking a deal with the streaming giant.
‘Oh, no,’ Meghan will (almost certainly) have simpered to nervous producers. ‘The chickens would be trampled if we took them to watch polo. This is much more high octane. Haz, do polo ponies really run on gas?’
Nope, there is nothing remotely dignified about this latest docuseries if the trailer for Polo is anything to go by.
It portrays the game as the sport of bling in the gaudy manner of Real Housewives and Selling Sunset, the latter a reality show ostensibly about real estate, but where women – with cleavages so cavernous that Netflix will soon doubtless commission a reality show on the search to find the men lost in them – bicker in exchanges scripted by writers weaned on Dynasty.
The hammy, humourless lines are emoted in heavy Latin American accents: ‘The adrenaline that goes through your body. It’s addicting [sic].’ And from Nacho Figueras (no, me neither), the Argentine player and close friend of Harry’s: ‘Polo is a lifestyle. We breathe, we sleep, we eat polo.’ (Note: not the mint with a hole.)
Netflix has released a trailer for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s much-anticipated five-part series about polo
The dialogue is delivered with such fake gravitas and clunky acting I’m reminded of Al Pacino in his later years. You wonder how these people keep a straight face. Ah yes, of course. Botox.
The confected plotlines are born of a marriage between TOWIE and Made In Chelsea. In one scene, a pregnant woman is in labour while her husband, wearing breeches tight enough to make any conception immaculate, trashes a Bolly-laden table with his polo mallet because he couldn’t be at the birth.
The big drama of the series will concern a father-son duo who will be playing against each other. Oh, how reality TV mirrors, um, life!
‘I want to win against my dad,’ says the young rider against the backdrop of a chewing nag. But this isn’t Prince Harry talking about his father.
In fact, we don’t see Harry at all in the trailer. But, make no mistake, his and Meghan’s names loom large (literally – the font is huge) in the opening credits: ‘Executive produced by Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex.’
What does ‘executive produced’ even mean? Did they put up the money? Don’t be silly. Of course not. Harry sold his soul.
Yes, Charles, William et al have long indulged in the sport of polo, but this series is not set in Windsor, nor even filmed at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club, home of Harry’s Los Padres team, not far from his Montecito mansion.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex worked as executive producers on the series, which airs on December 10
Harry and Meghan attend the Royal Salute Polo Challenge at Grand Champions Polo Club in Wellington, Florida, in April
Instead, the location is an exclusive enclave of Palm Beach in Florida, favoured by billionaires, which hosts the US Open Polo Championships and is minutes from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
There will be no treading-in of hoof-marks between chukkas; the women wear stilettos and would take root. Remember the photo of a young Prince Charles, breeches stained green, chatting to Camilla beneath a tree? Compared with this lot they seem, if not down-to-earth, then at least human.
Yet the worst moment in the trailer, something so Hallmark it wouldn’t even make the cut of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals, is when a Latin American hunk emerges from his bath, sleek as an otter, shaking droplets and sporting a necklace so heavy I’m surprised he didn’t drown.
That the King’s son has allowed himself to be associated with this trash makes me glad Queen Elizabeth is no longer alive to cover her eyes as she watched it.
Harry is on his leather-padded knees. What next? His own slot on the Shopping Channel? How can Harry and Meghan possibly travel the globe, preaching about poverty and diversity and inclusion, when not one black player can be spied; the men are the colour of a super-yacht’s decking, while the funds required to run a polo team doubtless outstrip that of Formula 1.
How can they lecture us about global warming when one player admits he flies to Argentina twice a week? The overdose of conspicuous, sunlit consumption makes me yearn for mud, wellies, fog.
And, yes, we know Meghan once toiled on game shows, but Harry? It’s like discovering Princess Anne secretly pole dances. How can someone lose any vestige of class? And to lose it so swiftly (in 150 seconds) by putting his name to something even more gaudy than the ground floor of Harrods. There is no ironic distance, no clever condemnation. It’s all as straight as Meghan’s perfect teeth.
The trailer ends with portentous banner headlines and orchestral booming: ‘For legacy’, ‘For courage’ and ‘For glory’. It’s hardly the Battle of Bosworth Field. But in styling it as such, Harry really has given his kingdom for a pony.
