Polo

Rating:

Another Christmas, another creative offering from Harry and Meghan, those titans of television, forever beavering away in their Montecito mansion.

Two years ago, we had the six-part Harry & Meghan mini-series – the first programme of their $100million Netflix deal from which they promised to produce ‘content that informs but also gives hope’ through a ‘truthful and relatable lens’.

Since then, we’ve had one decent documentary about Harry’s Invictus Games and another, less good, about leadership. 

Their $20million Archetypes podcast for Spotify was scrapped in 2023 after just 13 episodes. And despite a lot of talk about a Meghan cookery programme, there is still no show.

But none of that has dampened their spirits. Because now they bring us Polo.

Not, sadly, the next series of the brilliantly naughty adaptation of Dame Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire romp-a-thon, courtesy of Disney+. But instead a five-part docu-series about the breathtakingly elite world of polo, which will ‘pull the curtain back on the grit and passion of the sport’.

To be fair, in the opening moments it does promise rather a lot.

Harry and Meghan’s blink-and-you-miss-it appearance in Polo comes at the beginning of episode five, when Harry plays a charity polo match for his non-profit Sentebale

That we’re going to enjoy ‘one of the most thrilling sports you can imagine’. Full of ‘dirty, sweaty, sexy boys – riding…’, a lot of drama and tension, and a man in a fuchsia pink polo shirt smashing up a cool box with his polo stick in a rage.

Perfect for a wet Wednesday in London. You’d think.

The ‘drama’ centres around the build-up to the World Cup in Florida, where a lot of very slim women with very smooth faces and less smooth necks will cheer on muscular menfolk who take it all very seriously indeed.

‘Our life is on the line every time we get out there,’ says one polo player, as if he’s a fireman or a marine, or perhaps a disaster relief worker.

‘Polo is not just a sport. Polo is a lifestyle. We eat, we breathe, we sleep polo!’ cries another.

And they clearly work hard at it, because they’re all wonderfully ripped and muscled, with astonishingly white teeth, strong forearms, very expensive watches, Louis Vuitton holdalls and chests like brick walls.

We see them lift weights and sky dive and go deep sea fishing and drive expensive cars with lovely leather interiors as dramatic music swirls.

And we learn that Tim Dutta, 22, is a sweet boy who is funded by his over-bearing dad who is always shouting ‘we’re here for one thing and that’s to win’, and spoiled by his mum. But at least he seems to really love his horses.

Meghan planted a kiss on Harry after his team the Royal Salute Sentebale won the charity match featured in episode five of the docu-series

Harry and Meghan’s $20million Archetypes podcast for Spotify was scrapped in 2023 after just 13 episodes

Nacho Figueras and Delfina Blaquier with Meghan and Harry at the Royal Salute Polo Challenge benefitting Sentebale in April

That Adolfo Cambiaso, from Argentina, is the ‘Michael Jordan of Polo’.

And that Louis Devaleix, the loathsome patron and player of a team called La Fe, is the cool box smasher – and also has biceps as big as hams, a nasty temper, a pregnant wife and doesn’t seem to care much about his ponies.

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‘I don’t even know what my f***ing horses’ names are!’ he says.

It seems odd that executive producers Harry and Meghan were so desperate to share this ghastly world with the rest of us.

But despite criticism that the sport is ferociously elitist, a carbon disaster and not always very nice for the poor ponies – don’t get Peta started, for goodness’ sake – Meghan is said to adore the whole polo scene.

And according to his best mate and fellow polo player, Nacho Figueras, it has always been Harry’s ‘dream and passion to share with the world what it takes to be a really competitive polo player’.

Though, sadly, not in person.

Because while they were ‘very hands on’ in the making, they are not really in it – other than Harry’s five-second cameo in the third minute and a joint, brief, appearance in Episode Five.

But their ridiculous polo pals do their best to make up for that – explaining to us novices that there are four in a team, six seven and a half minute ‘chukkas’ (periods of play) to a game and that riders change horses ‘like Formula One drivers’.

And strutting about in tight trousers, popping confetti-filled balloons to choose fixtures, flashing their naked chests and piping up with ridiculous comments such as ‘polo gives me hope that I can accomplish something’ and ‘He was hand made by God to play polo’.

Awful though it all is, I wonder whether, in the right hands, it could have been fun, guilty pleasure TV – a sort of brilliant mash-up of Rivals, Selling Sunset and Made in Wrexham, that made us shout the telly in horrified joy.

Instead, somehow, it is flat, plodding and really rather boring. And if it tried, it couldn’t be any further from ‘content that informs but also gives hope’.