What's New
Prince Harry's Netflix show Polo has failed to make the top 10 list in Britain, America or globally, amid searing criticism from reviewers.
The five-part series dropped on Tuesday last week, meaning it missed just one day of the weekly chart running from December 9 to December 15.
Polo, though, did not make it into the Netflix charts in the country of Harry's birth, his adopted home in America, the world as a whole, or any other country Newsweek checked.
Spy thriller Black Doves topped the global list with 14.6 million views, ahead of Jamie Foxx: What Had Happened Was... on 8.2 million and No Good Deed on 6 million.
Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey was 10th with 1.8 million views, suggesting Harry's show came in somewhere behind that.
Why It Matters
Harry and Meghan Markle signed with the streaming giant in September 2020 when they were rising stars, newly living their post-royal lives in the California sunshine.
It took them two more years to debut their first project, Harry & Meghan, which revisited the royal bombshells they first dropped during their Oprah Winfrey interview in 2021.
While that project was commercially successful, they have struggled to find a major audience for follow up shows Live to Lead and Heart of Invictus, despite the huge sums of money promised by Netflix.
Early reviews of Harry's latest offering, Polo, heaped scorn on the five-part series, a look inside the world of a sport the prince has played throughout his life.
And now the Netflix top ten charts have been updated, it appears their latest offering will indeed strut and fret its hour upon the stage and then be heard no more.
What To Know
Polo charts the lives of competitors in the U.S. Open and includes some moments of high drama, including an on field injury and a rivalry between a father and son.
Fans of Harry and Meghan will find precious little of the couple in the show, however, as they only appear in the opening sequence and the final episode.
Their on screen involvement is confined to a charity polo tournament, the Royal Salute Polo Challenge in Wellington, Florida, which raised money for Harry's charity Sentebale.
Harry was recorded making small talk with teammate Adolfo Cambiaso before Meghan had a brief conversation with him in Spanish about the fact she had briefly lived in his homeland, Argentina, when she was younger.
What People Are Saying
Eric Schiffer, chair of Reputation Management Consultants, recently told Newsweek: "It's a pompous portrayal of privilege posing as a documentary.
"It feels fake. You could almost see an ad, 'polo the new cure for insomnia, brought to you by royalty.'
"They've made it the new frontier of unrelatability. This ensures polo becomes even less popular for regular people. It just reeks of entitled and is disconnected, unrelatable."
A two-star review in The Guardian described Polo as "unintentionally hilarious" and added: "Obnoxiously privileged players weep in darkened rooms when they lose ... this documentary about the royal's hobby is like a spoof."
"Polo is the stupidest, most obnoxious sport known to humanity," it continued. "It's the playground of the rich.
"It's a sport where fixtures are chosen by popping confetti-filled balloons, like a nightmarish gender reveal party.
"It requires incredible wealth, usually inherited, which means you could tip a bucket of paint over the entire sport and not hit a single person who even remotely qualified as an underdog.
"It's a show about privileged people showing us exactly how privileged they are, which means there isn't a lot of drama to be found."
It did not fair much better in U.K. broadsheet The Times: "Prince Harry has made a TV show only he would watch."
"It's hard not to shake the feeling that you're watching the equivalent of a large, expensive coffee-table book.
"In The Last Dance, there was a good chance that viewers knew the key basketball superstars and even if they didn't, there was a palpable sense of sporting history on the line.
"The series Welcome to Wrexham, focusing on Wrexham FC, was about a town's pride, about achieving the dream.
"Here, despite the efforts of the showrunner Milos Balac, who also produced Welcome to Wrexham, it's simply impossible to relate in the same way to the sleek, tanned, sports car-driving players of polo, despite the lurking theme of demanding fathers.
"However much of it is shot through a 'truthful and relatable lens', it lacks a streak of mischief. Still, if you were, say, Prince Harry, it would no doubt be the most compelling thing on TV."
What Happens Next
Prince Harry and Meghan's Netflix deal is expected to wind down next year, with a lifestyle show from Meghan still in the pipeline.
In April, the streaming giant said the series "celebrates the joys of cooking, gardening, entertaining, and friendship."
There were also reports of Harry and Meghan adapting Carley Fortune's hit romance novel Meet Me at the Lake, set in Canada, where Meghan lived during her time filming Suits.
Very little news has come out about the project, with no reports about casting or release date.
While the Sussexes do love a stealth drop, the couple have never actually commented publicly on the reports they were involved despite Polo and Meghan's lifestyle show being confirmed in April.
Fans might therefore be forgiven for wondering whether Meet Me at the Lake is in fact on its way to Netflix or not.
That would not doubt be a shame for Fortune, however, who said back in 2023: "I'm so thrilled about working with Netflix and Archewell to bring Meet Me at the Lake to the screen."
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about Charles and Queen Camilla, William and Kate, Meghan Markle and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
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