Harry & Meghan

Live[s] up to its no-holds-barred expectations. ... There’s plenty of dynamite stuff to give the Sussexes’ detractors something to spew over. At points, it’s hard to tell if the couple are naïve or disingenuous. ... ut, at times, I find the couple endearing; at others, deeply sympathetic.

It’s a few things all at once: an enraging tale of racism, a fascinating look into a profoundly rarefied way of life, and a sometimes too self-celebratory vanity project that, for the most part, reiterates what we already know. ... The [battle between conformity and individuality] has been told many times before — from the days of King Edward’s abdication in order to marry a divorcee, to the split between Charles and Diana — but it’s one that nonetheless resonates.

Harry & Meghan feels like a genuine and honest story of what it’s like behind palace doors.

A sharper editor might have encourage the trimming of previously reported information that ultimately isn’t relevant to what appears to be the broader goal: Assessing the system itself. The series doesn’t fully solve this dilemma, of servicing the intentions of its two primary subjects, while also telling a larger story about the intertwined interests of the monarchy and tabloid media, all of it shaped and informed by xenophobia and racism.

In the end – what are we left with? Exactly the same story we always knew, told in the way we would expect to hear it from the people who are telling it.

It is unsurprising that the portrait ends up a flattering one, sympathetic to their trials and scrupulously respectful of their perspectives. What it does not turn out to be is essential.

It’s a diary entry. Diary entries can be helpful when they provide untold insights into their subjects, but “Harry & Meghan” is merely a long, redundant recap of two very public lives. And absent any challenging questions from outside the couple’s tidy little love bubble, it’s a dull one at that.

There’s little new juicy drama and few shocking reveals. ... What the series does offer, instead, are some underdeveloped attempts at historical racial analysis. ... But the sociohistorical analysis, judged on its own merits, feels lacking.

There was nothing “bombshell” or even very new here. It was beautifully shot but it was repetitive, whingy and boring.

As with the most recent, painfully dull season of “The Crown,” there seems a sort of narrative stuckness, an inability or lack of desire to find the next thing to say that we haven’t yet heard.