Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Latest Project Is Getting Panned by Critics

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s $100 million Netflix deal may not be as lucrative as they’d hoped. After their controversial six-part docuseries Harry & Meghan debuted to plenty of eyes in 2022, their newest project, Polo, is proving to be a massive disappointment. Although the five-part series was seemingly poised to be a hit, Polo has not only failed to crack Netflix’s Top 10, but has also been slammed by critics as “tedious” and “mostly boring.”

Coming on the heels of successful sports documentaries like Disney+’s Welcome to Wrexham and ESPN’s The Last Dance, Polo focuses on the equestrian sport Harry has played since he was a child. Co-produced by Archewell, the production company founded by Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and Boardwalk Pictures, the series offers a “behind-the-scenes look at the fast-paced and glamorous world of Polo” and follows elite global players on and off the field in the build-up to the U.S. Open Polo Championship in Wellington, Florida.

The series was released on Netflix on Dec. 10, but has seemingly mostly gone unnoticed on the platform. So far, it hasn’t broken into the streamer’s Top 10. Subscribers who have watched it aren’t showing it much love, with Polo currently only holding a 25% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics also aren’t giving Polo any love.

Writing in his review for The Guardian, Stuart Heritage, who gave the series just two stars, said “Polo looks destined to fall through the submenus into obscurity at the speed of light… It’s clattering and niche.” Recommending that viewers “skip it,” Decider’s Joel Keller said “Polo is a mostly boring look at a sport that very few people outside of elite circles have any particular interest in.”

Many also took issue with the fact that despite his connection to the project, and his own love of the sport, Harry only makes a handful of brief appearances in the documentary. Similarly, Meghan only makes a few onscreen appearances. The Telegraph‘s Ed Power wrote that there was “not enough of the Sussexes to make this anything other than a dull indulgence about a rich person’s pursuit.” Harry’s former friend, Tommy Severn, the captain of Polo England, said “it seemed to be more about Timmy and Tim Dutta than the Prince, who doesn’t appear until near the end,” per Express.

Polo marked the latest project as part of Harry and Meghan’s Netflix deal, which they inked in 2020 as they stepped down as working royals. And relocated to the U.S. The six-part documentary Harry & Meghan dropped as their first Netflix series in 2022, with Live to Lead, an interview series featuring the likes of Greta Thunberg and Gloria Steinem, following in December 2022. Heart of Invictus, about the Invictus Games, premiered in 2023. Just like Polo, the two latter titles also failed to break into the Top 10.

With the disappointing performance of Polo, Harry and Meghan are reportedly at risk of losing their Netflix deal, which expires in 2025. A told Closer Magazine that the couple are reportedly “starting to panic” following the series’ disappointing reception, though they remain hopeful the show will “gather momentum and prove the critics wrong.”

Netflix hasn’t commented on the future of their deal with the Sussexes, and it remains unclear if it will be extended. There are several projects currently in the works under the deal, including Meghan’s planned cooking show, which has completed filming but doesn’t yet have a release date. It was also previously reported that Harry and Meghan were set to adapt Carley Fortune’s romance novel Meet Me at the Lake for the Netflix. The future of that project is reportedly up in the air amid the upcoming expiration of the Sussex’s deal with Netflix.