“With each show, it seems the viewers only dropped off and without them, the writing was on the wall for Harry and Meghan.” Streaming columnist NICK OVERALL looks at the Netflix decision to not renew its contract with the formerly royal couple.

NETFLIX has parted ways with the duo who have become its most controversial content creators.

The streaming giant has opted not to renew their $US100 million deal with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle following a string of shows and docos spearheaded by the couple that have dramatically bombed.

While the duke, duchess and Netflix tried to quietly call it a day, the global media have certainly been much louder about it.

“Harry and Meg’s Netflix deal is DEAD,” the London Sun reported.

“Meghan Markle and Prince Harry dealt a huge blow,” exclaimed the Daily Express.

Anyone would think they might be a little excited about it.

The Sussexes first signed their major agreement with Netflix in 2020 to create a line-up of documentaries, movies and children’s programs.

In 2022, the content kicked off with Harry and Meghan, a doco about themselves and the self described ordeal they endured over the last few years while separating themselves from the Royal family.

The idea was to create some sympathy for their apparent plight. Instead it might go down as one of the biggest backfires in TV history.

The criticism was immense, with the six-episode show essentially getting chalked up to be nothing more than a six-hour whinge fest.

But despite all of that panning, it is still considered to be one of the most watched debuts in Netflix history.

Harry and Meghan reached more than 28 million households around the world in its first four days of release.

For Netflix, regardless of the reception, it did exactly what it was supposed to do: generate talk.

Not long after that audiences got Live to Lead, a seven-part documentary series that spent each episode gushing about topical figureheads such as Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Greata Thunberg.

Those who hadn’t yet succumbed to crippling death by boredom might have then tried Polo, released in December 2024. A documentary that wanted to go behind the scenes of the obscure sport that Harry is a big fan of, in a bid to try and get more people interested. It seems to have done the opposite.

The show was watched by around 500,000 people. It holds a meagre 3/10 on IMDB, the platform, which allows users to rate films and television online.

Admittedly, of some more inspiration was the 2023 production Heart of Invictus, which told the story of several competitors in the Invictus Games –  the brainchild of Prince Harry. The sporting competition was created for wounded or ill servicemen and women, and some of the journeys explored in the series were quite extraordinary.

But any promise created by this series was not long after shattered by perhaps the worst of the line: With Love, Meghan. This reality show was supposed to give a more personal insight into Meghan’s life by “candidly” putting audiences in the kitchen as she bakes cakes and sniffs flowers amongst other frivolities.

The only thing that was cooked up though was a major storm. The show became the butt of a worldwide joke, awash in a torrent of internet memes.

At the end of the day it’s likely Netflix wouldn’t really care if the hate continued to pile on these shows so long as the viewers and subsequent subscribers continued to roll in, even if just to see how bad the whole shemozzle truly was.

But with each show it seems the viewers only dropped off and without them, the writing was on the wall.

Netflix has developed a reputation for being trigger happy when it comes to cancellations. In this day and age where endless piles of content roll through the door, if it’s not immediately hooking audiences you can be sure it will get the boot.

The mass reach of streaming has made the industry very much a sink-or-swim environment and this content deal is well and truly on the ocean floor, going down as, perhaps, streaming’s biggest flop.