What do we learn from all eight episodes of season two of With Love, Meghan, which went live this morning?

Meghan realized she was in love with Harry by their third date in Botswana, although it was Harry who first uttered “I love you.” Harry has indeed contributed to her personal growth: he advised her to use dock leaves if stung by nettles. It seems that his education at Eton was quite worthwhile!

During her pregnancy, Meghan enjoyed eating dates. Her freezer is stocked with mac ‘n’ cheese. Harry isn’t fond of cinnamon and lobster, yet she still chose him as her husband! She enjoys a McDonald’s drive-thru apple pie but gets unsettled by a sink full of dirty dishes.

Meghan describes Archie as the “sweetest, most tender, lovable child ever” and mentions that Lili has a fondness for pink—hardly a shocker. Meg gets a blotchy chest when anxious, leading her to opt for roll neck tops (her wardrobe—featuring brands like Khaite, Anine Bing, and Veronica Beard—reflects understated, Succession-like elegance).

Meghan always dreamt of being a “mom” and admits that being away from her children for three weeks made her feel “unwell.” She also shares what she misses about the UK. Not the castles or history, but Magic FM. “I have grandma taste!” she exclaims. Quite the statement to make.

While many might be indulging in hate-watching Meghan’s Netflix show’s second series, I actually found it more engaging than the first (the new eight episodes were shot right after the initial season). Gone is the single-skillet pasta from the first season, and unfortunately, Mindy Kaling isn’t featured this time (the actress and comedian who famously mispronounced ‘Le Creuset’ and inspired the “I’m Mrs. De Winter now!” remark).

On the other hand, we do see model Chrissy Teigen, whose look dramatically changed since her Deal Or No Deal days with Meghan about 20 years ago; she appears as if her face has met with a bicycle pump. Gone are those fresh-faced appearances.

Teigen is more famous now as wife to US singer-songwriter John Legend and the mother of four kids who once joked that she adds baby powder to flour when she fries chicken ‘so it smells like tender toddler booty’.

No such finger-lickin’ cannibalism on this show, though we do have ‘engagement chicken’. The very recipe Meghan was preparing the night Harry proposed no less, although that night ‘it was horrible’, she admits, having been confused by imperial measurements.

Other guests we have actually heard of this time are Michelin-starred chef Clare Smyth, who catered their wedding and reveals Meg has ‘great knife skills’; fashion guru and star of Netflix series Queer Eye Tan France (he advises Meghan to slather her face weekly with thick yoghurt to ensure she ages like fine wine, not bananas); and American-Iranian chef Samin Nosrat, who wrote Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. She reveals to Meg she has dinner every Monday with a close-knit group of friends, at which Meghan looks wildly jealous; she does seem lonely – most of the guests she is meeting for the first time, aside from mega-wealthy cosmetics entrepreneur Jamie Kern Lima (aka Buzz Lightyear), who interviewed Meghan on her podcast in April – and quite often bored. There is less energy about Meghan in these episodes.

While many people will be hate-watching the second series of the Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix show, I actually found it more entertaining than the first, writes Liz Jones

Meghan with model Chrissy Teigen, who looks like someone attacked her face with a bicycle pump

Will the second series reach the top 300 on Netflix and make the company rethink their current first-refusal deal with Meghan and ‘H’, which is as diluted as her alcohol-free spritzers? Well, the Sussex squad superfans were out in force on social media to make damn sure it’s a hit: ‘Let’s watch this on Netflix, let’s resist the urge to post videos. Netflix is not counting Twitter likes or SM [social media] views.’

The new series coincides with the restock of the As Ever shelves with her brand of jams, pancake mixes and flower sprinkles – a marketing wheeze as crisp at the edges of her handmade (or as the Americans call it ‘hand’) apple pie.

Of course, most critics will rip this show to shreds, proclaiming: ‘I couldn’t make it past lavender towels!’ 

More surprisingly, an early take from Forbes magazine was: ‘More commanding and confident… great depth and warmth’. For me, it’s televisual Valium, as soothing as warm chai sipped on a windswept beach.

It is all staged and fake, of course – it’s again filmed in a hired house near her home in Montecito – but then, so is Nigella. And while you just know Nigella has a core of steel, Meghan really is this gauche. She calls bread-making ‘moving meditation’ and means it. What I love about Meghan – aside from the fact she makes a pressed forget-me-not necklace for Guy, her beagle (RIP) – is she seems genuinely earnest: it really is not an act.

She repeats the phrase ‘so sweet’ often and seems warm with the crew. I adore, too, the day drinking; there is nowhere she goes without a coup of champagne. So, here at last is the chink in her armour: who wouldn’t resort to alcohol given the headlines, the hate? She alludes to the rumours and trolling obliquely, even referring to an old canard that she’d had a child pre-Harry: ‘If I’d have kept a secret like that, that would have been impressive.’

Does Harry appear? Only in framed photographs, though we do see a baseball cap she had made for him to mark his 40th.

He’s like a ginger ghost, however, haunting every scene. I’d have loved him to slope, bare-chested, behind Meghan as she channelled Demi Moore, making pottery. Now, that would have got the series into the top ten…