All credit to Netflix. Just when you thought it might have lost its touch, it has played an absolute blinder on the promotional strategy for Harry & Meghan, its docu-series starring the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Monday saw the release of a second trailer for the six-part series, as well as confirmation that the first three episodes – aka “Volume I” – will land on the platform this Thursday, with the “Volume II” batch following a week later.
The one-minute trailer, in which Prince Harry refers to a “dirty game” being played between the British monarchy and the media, was swiftly republished on UK news sites and dissected on news programmes, including the main lunchtime BBC One bulletin.
Incensed newspapers
All this money-can’t-buy publicity for the streaming service was, of course, merely a sequel to the faux-apoplectic reaction to last Thursday’s initial teaser, which saw incensed newspapers complain that Netflix, Harry and Meghan had purposefully and wrongly overshadowed a trip by Prince Harry’s brother and sister-in-law to Boston.
The hilarious outrage came accompanied by the pretence that the sight of Prince William dishing out awards for environmentalism at the Earthshot Prize – an event dutifully televised by the BBC on Sunday – was genuine competition for the box-office drama of rogue royals Harry and Meghan venting in their big-money, lens-burning companion piece to The Crown.
Unsurprisingly, Netflix – a company that, like Meghan Markle, hails from California – did not subscribe to the suggestion that Prince William, by virtue of being on US soil, had gained some sort of automatic ability to pull rank when it came to royal media coverage. It did not feel his presence there should be respected with silence. Quite the opposite.
Speaking of silence, if Fleet Street’s disapprovers-in-chief truly object to the ongoing spotlight commanded by Harry and Meghan, they can always ignore their series. You know, just don’t mention it.
Netflix, for its part, is already laughing all the way to the royal bank.
