Has anyone seen the trailer for this series yet? I’ve seen a few reports about it and watched the trailer. Not sure if I will watch the series. It seems more lifestyle/personality focused, and less about the sport. 
I loved Jilly Cooper’s “Polo”, so will definitely watch this, just to give my “inner picture” of the book more context.
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I’ll give it a chance. It needs to be more about polo and less about individuals and a minimum of Harry and Meghan to keep me tho
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I’ll watch the first episode and give it a chance even though I don’t really want to support any venture of H/M.
If you want a more heart-warming and positive portrayal of polo other than Uber-rich people in their playground, check out “Crossing the Line”, a memoir about under-privileged kids in Philly who overcome a lot of adversity to become very successful. I’d 1000% have preferred a documentary on them.
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Oh cool. Thanks for that recommendation. Sounds interesting!
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thanks! Is that also on netflix?
No, it’s a book. They also have a Fb page “work to ride” (maybe other SM but I’m old I only do FB 
). Really a great story but with a very sad event at the end. But thought provoking and so much more deserving of recognition than what I think will be presented in this Netflix show.
I’m American (1st generation) but my parents are British and my hub is Irish and we all collectively think H/M are “tossers”. IMO their self-interests would have been far better served to do a documentary on the Philly kids (spoiler- poor black kids who work their ass off and succeed) than rich people doing what they have always done.
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Courtesy of news.com.au
Prince Harry’s Polo doco about ‘world’s stupidest sport’ roasted
The Duke of Sussex’s latest Netflix show has dropped – and it is being absolutely roasted by pretty much everyone.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s new Netflix series, Polo, was released on Tuesday to the deafening sound of claws being sharpened.
The reviews, scant as they are, are in – and if this show was a four-legged creature, it would be destined for the knackery.
With the ever-present tick, tick, tick of Harry and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix deal winding down, critics have mauled the five-parter.
The Guardian described it as an “unintentional comedy” about “the stupidest, most obnoxious sport known to humanity”. Their reviewer writes that the show looks “destined to fall … into obscurity at the speed of light. And rightly so. It’s clattering and niche, and feels like a spoof documentary”.
The Telegraph has declared the series “a dull indulgence about a rich person’s pursuit”.
Both papers gave it two stars, meaning that Polo’s direness might be the first thing that the left-leaning Guardian and right-leaning Telegraph have agreed on in modern history and which is surely one of the signs of the impending apocalypse.
In Polo, Harry and Meghan themselves only make brief seconds-long cameos, which have the air of the contractually obliged. The duchess briefly speaks Spanish to uber player Adolfo Cambiaso while the duke and Cambiaso have an interesting conversation about father-son dynamics.
Harry: “What’s it like playing against your kid?”
Cambiaso: “It’s difficult. And worse when you lose”.
Laughing, Harry responds: “You’re proud, but also angry".
Good luck Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, if they ever get on a horse.
Having watched most of the series, I can say this: Bugger me. It’s nearly four hours given over to a clutch of inherently unlikeable wealthy men who bang on about winning seemingly in between having their teeth recapped.
The cast features an interchangeable roster of generically good looking young polo players with nary one full personality to share between them and a series of women of an indeterminate age whose faces are not their original ones. They are allowed to sit on the sidelines and clap.
Overall, the cast is, generally speaking, an unappealing, unlikeable bunch of self-absorbed men and there is a certain sad grasping for plot lines. One episode’s narrative arc involves a resentful player being forced to attend his wife’s baby shower – and the airconditioning breaks down. In another episode, the player attacks an Esky with a polo mallet after losing a game and then cries on his own.
Interestingly, there are several characters who are traumatised sons who have failed to deal with their daddy issues and take it out on the polo field. No wonder Harry loves playing this sport.
Think lifestyles of the rich, repugnant and tediously over-invested in a sport destined to never go mainstream.
To quote Melania Trump, who lives down the road in Palm Beach where this was filmed, “I really don’t care. Do you?”
The biggest problem with Polo: It’s boring. It’s not glamorous or sexy or delicious trash to be savoured in all its Botox-ed glory TV.
It’s tough having to sit through an untold number of infographics to explain the minutiae of a game that does not work on TV screens and it’s a series where the tension is often so forced, so artificially amped up, it’s liable to pop the proliferation of fillered lips and brows that feature heavily too.
From the parts I have seen, the question of animal cruelty is dodged – interesting given that Meghan remains the patron of a British dog rescue home.
And women? You know, that 50 per cent of the world’s population? (And 49 per cent of Netflix’s subscribers?) They are reduced to such retrograde stereotypes, I want to do a spot of screaming. All women do in Polo is sit on the sidelines and shop and drink and cook and entertain. One gets to ride a horse, once.
None of the players followed by the Netflix cameras are female. (47 out of the 48 players in the tournament the show is about are male).
Sometimes, women are put on camera to express the feelings that their menfolk patently cannot because they are off winning or talking about winning or practising winning or dreaming about winning hostile takeovers or some such.
At one stage, a young player discusses his mother’s idea for a new team strategy at a cocktail party. “What the f**k does she know?” another man says, and they all guffaw. Women! Them and their funny ‘ideas’.
I wonder what their neighbour and Meghan’s friend Gloria Steinem might think?
(Of how much Harry was a part of things behind the camera, showrunner Miloš Balać has told Variety that the duke was “involved … in a pretty incredible way”, so are we to assume he saw no issue with any of this?)
One of the Sussexes’ Archewell Foundation’s pillars is “uplifting women and girls” and yet they have put out a show where women are supporting characters who are generally being ignored or overlooked by their husbands and boyfriends. You know, when they are not supportively clapping from the stands.
Overall, if Polo is the calibre of what the Sussexes can produce, let’s hope they have wisely and very safely invested the tens of millions they have already banked from Netflix.
Along with Meghan’s as-yet-untitled cooking, lifestyle-y show (out next year), this and Polo are the Sussexes’ last ditch, last roll of the dice attempts to establish themselves as producers who can cut it in the sharky waters of Hollywood.
Back in 2020, they said they were going to make “content that informs but also gives hope” and instead have ended up essentially failing to even be able to make a decent Real Horsewives show.
At one point, player Louis Devaleix says of taking to the field against Harry, he “was not relaxing. He wanted to win at all costs”.
With Polo, he has decidedly not, critically at least.
Only time will tell if viewers lap this up.
One last note. The same day that Polo was released also happened to be the 88th anniversary of the day Harry’s great, great uncle King Edward VIII abdicated in favour of Wallis Simpson and living out his days in hollow, pampered idleness.
Both men gave up royalty to forge new, independent lives overseas. Just how is that turning out, do you think?
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
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Yikes! That’s brutal.
Thanks for sharing the review though.
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If you watch the F1 or the golf docuseries on Netflix that will give you an idea what this will be like. I love both so I’m sure I will like this one just as much seeing that it is horse related.
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I watched 2 episodes – the one player who said he didn’t even know the names of his horses, summed it up for me.
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Dang, I’ve enjoyed Drive to Survive and Break Point so I was looking forward to this. Sounds awful, will still be hate-watching.
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Soooooo…I binge watched it yesterday and it was not as bad as I thought it would be from the reviews. The non pro business guy they chose to follow was a super douche but I enjoyed watching everybody else. I learned some things about polo I didn’t know, like there is a single sponsor for the whole team and that sponsor (patron they are called) gets an automatic spot to ride on it! I’d say if you have some time to burn on a rainy day it’s worth a watch.
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I didn’t realize polo was so rough on the horses, but the trailer has scenes of them being ridden into one another at speed. I don’t know if that’s a rare occurrence or the norm.
Some people worry that eventing (at the highest levels) might be unethical because the risk of injury to the horse is quite high. Ditto for horse racing. How should we think about polo?
I’ve heard stories of them being ridden into cardiac arrest. Each polo rider needs multiple horses per match and they switch them out a lot to keep them fresh.
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Timmy Dutta’s dad keeps track of the time each horse is ridden during a chukker which I thought was interesting
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They also have CRAAAAZY gear on their faces and in their mouths. Almost puts the barrel racers to shame.
Polo is VERY demanding on the horses.
It’s a rich person’s sport, and very much about the glamour and money on display - the horses can become expendable machines in the background very easily. I’d say racing is likely to value an individual horse more than polo. In fact a lot of small OTTBs go on to be polo horses, in part because they’re cheap and gutsy.
Lower level fun leagues can be fun to watch though with the right people. Horses seem to enjoy it, if the rider is skilled and not just yanking on the mouth. A good polo pony is almost automatic - they learn the game very fast.
I’ve never played, but I know someone who does H/J and fun league polo, often on the same horses. All I’ll say is the horses look MUCH happier jumping around than they do playing polo.
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I actually rode in an intro to polo clinic last month - it was a lot of fun, but I do suck at hitting the ball. The mare I rode was very well trained and responded to very light aids. Double reins are required for safety so either double reins on the bit or a draw rein, martingale is standard (think there was a safety reason for it too?) so it does end up looking like a lot if you are used to plain snaffle and nada else eh
Polo does not have as high of a profile in public discourse and the media as racing, eventing, and dressage do. IMO, that’s the only reason it’s not more part of those conversations–as others have said, it is incredibly demanding on the ponies physically, there is gear used regularly that I would certainly never allow near my horse, and there can be a culture of “I don’t know how to ride but I want to play polo anyway” that is largely absent in the other English disciplines that exacerbates many of those issues. With that said, of course not all polo players are created equal, and many ponies do seem to pick up the rules and engage full-heartedly with the run of play.
FWIW I’m far from an expert, just grew up going to polo matches, have known many people who play or have played at a variety of levels, and have seriously entertained learning to play a few times myself. I would still love to try a low level learn to play clinic at some point, but I fully expect I’d be terrible at it.
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